WASHINGTON – The Department of Veterans Affairs has awarded nearly $20 million to a Texas firm to develop a new 47-acre section of FortSamHoustonNationalCemetery in San Antonio.
“This expansion will ensure the veterans of the San Antonio area continue to have the option of burial in a national shrine that honors their military service,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. James B. Peake. “FortSamHoustonNationalCemetery is one of our most venerable national shrines and serves a large, rapidly growing community of veterans.”
The Emerson Construction Company of Temple was awarded a $19,975,000 construction contract to develop additional gravesites and infrastructure. Construction is expected to be completed in the summer of 2010.
With the expansion, burials for veterans and eligible family members are expected to continue at the cemetery until about 2020.
The newly developed acreage will provide 16,023 pre-placed crypt gravesites, 4,016 columbaria niches, 3,411 traditional gravesites and 1,475 in-ground cremation sites. The project will also include a vehicle storage building, a new administration building, an expansion of the existing maintenance building, an assembly area, an irrigation system, roads, utilities, signage and landscaping.
In the midst of the largest cemetery expansion since the Civil War, VA operates 125 national cemeteries in 39 states and Puerto Rico and 33 soldiers' lots and monument sites. More than three million Americans, including veterans of every war and conflict — from the Revolutionary War to the Global War on Terror — are buried in VA’s national cemeteries.
Veterans with a discharge other than dishonorable, their spouses and eligible dependent children can be buried in a national cemetery. Other burial benefits available for all eligible veterans, regardless of whether they are buried in a national cemetery or a private cemetery, include a burial flag, a Presidential Memorial Certificate and a government headstone or marker.
Information on VA burial benefits can be obtained from national cemetery offices, from the Internet at www.cem.va.gov or by calling VA regional offices toll-free at 1-800-827-1000.
