From Military.com:
“4 New Burial Sites with
Capacity for More Than 300,000 Veterans and Their Families Part of VA Plans”
(Wilmington National Cemetery is
located near downtown Wilmington, North Carolina—an important Civil War supply
depot. It serves as the final resting place for Union troops as well as a group
of Puerto Rican laborers who fell victim to the great influenza epidemic of
1918. Established in 1867, the cemetery was listed on the National Register of
Historic Places in 1997.)
After several years of planning
and delays, the Department of Veterans Affairs is pushing for funding to open
four new, unique burial sites within the next two years -- two columbaria in
major cities and two rural cemeteries in the West that eventually will entomb
310,000 veterans or family members. The four sites are in New York City;
Indianapolis; Elko, Nevada; and Cedar City, Utah, and will cost the VA $3
million next year to ensure that they will open and be staffed within the next
two years. According to budget documents released last month, the funding would
continue these facilities’ "activations," defined as readying them a
year before opening and supporting operations afterward. The New York site in
Queens and the Indiana site, first proposed in 2015, are part of the VA's Urban
Initiative effort, which looks to provide columbarium-only locations for
cremated bodies in city centers with few in-ground burial options.
Under the Urban Initiative, the
VA has plans to build facilities in five cities across the country. To date,
Los Angeles has been the only one to open, first taking cremated remains in
2019. The remainder have been delayed by months and even years, including a new
columbarium planned for San Francisco that was set to open in 2015 but whose
date has been pushed to 2027. Under revised plans, the VA had hoped to open the
New York and Indianapolis columbaria by mid-2021 and one in Chicago in 2022.
The department is now planning for a dedication of the New York and
Indianapolis facilities this summer. Among the eight new national cemeteries in
rural areas, the VA has dedicated and opened six, with the Elko, Nevada, and
Cedar City, Utah, sites remaining.
The National Cemetery
Administration, or NCA, embarked on these projects to ensure that veterans have
"reasonable access" for burial, with either a state or national
cemetery within 75 miles of their homes. The VA found that 8% of veterans don't
have that proximity, and it set a goal for reducing the number to 4% by 2017. A
2019 Government Accountability Office report found that the VA's goals were
overly ambitious and the National Cemetery Administration overstated its
expectations to complete the new projects by 2017. The GAO also found that the
VA underestimated the cost of the projects, especially the rural cemeteries,
with cost estimates rising from $7 million to $24 million.
VA officials also have requested
$9.4 million for 2023 for existing cemeteries that are facing "workload
increases and project expansions." The VA estimates that 570,000 veterans
will die in 2022, and roughly 136,500 of those will be buried in VA cemeteries.
In 2018, the VA had 3.7 million gravesites; the number is expected to reach 4.2
million in 2023. "This budget request is essential for NCA to maintain its
position as the "most highly regarded organization, in both the public and
private sectors, in terms of customer satisfaction," officials wrote in
the budget documents. Also as part of its budget proposal, the VA has asked
Congress for legislation that would allow it to designate parts of cemeteries
as "green burial sections," where veterans could choose to have their
gravesites marked by means other than upright headstones or choose to be buried
without a vault. The VA also has asked to receive two acres of land at Fort
Bliss, Texas, to expand the national cemetery and again has requested legislation
that would allow it to keep veterans out of national cemeteries who allegedly
committed serious sex crimes but died before being convicted or fled to avoid
prosecution.
^ These new places will help us
honor more Veterans for their service. ^
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.