Springs will get veterans cemetery, official says

Colorado Springs will get a veterans cemetery of its own, a top Department of Veterans Affairs boss said during a congressional hearing here Friday.

With the region's national cemetery at Fort Logan expected to run out of space within a decade, VA Undersecretary William Tuerk said he anticipates his agency will start looking for land in the Pikes Peak region as soon as 2009.

Tuerk backtracked on earlier statements that a new cemetery should be between Colorado Springs and Denver, saying he would also consider sites south of the city.

An additional national cemetery for the region is making headway in Washington after being pushed by local veterans groups for the past 15 years.

Building the cemetery still needs approval from Congress and the Bush administration, but local veterans were encouraged that the prospects appear brighter than ever before.

"I have never heard them more encouraging," said cemetery proponent Vic Fernandez after hearing Tuerk's comments at a field hearing of the House subcommittee that oversees VA burial grounds.

Local veterans have long complained that Fort Logan National Cemetery in Denver is too far away. El Paso County has one of the largest concentrations of veterans in America. The county has 74,000 veterans and nearly 40,000 active-duty military members.

Fernandez and other local veterans have been appealing to Congress and the VA to build a cemetery here, but were largely rebuffed until last year, when the House passed legislation calling for the VA to build on a site in El Paso County. That measure is still awaiting Senate action.

The arguments for a local cemetery were strong enough for U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn to get his subcommittee's chairman, Rep. John Hall, D-N.Y., to come to Colorado Springs.

The three-hour hearing was also attended by U.S. Rep John Salazar, a Democrat whose district includes Pueblo County.

They heard from a variety of veterans groups and a pair of widows who described the hardship of having the region's national cemetery so far away.

"The traveling distance to such a congested metropolitan area poses great inconvenience to my young family," said Milly Briseno, a mother of three whose husband, a Fort Carson soldier, died of a stroke in 2005.

Lamborn said he's backing a measure that would give the VA $5 million to start scouting for land in Colorado Springs, Portland, Ore. and Puerto Rico.

Salazar said he's pushing hard for cemetery money, too.

"I'll do anything to make this happen," he said.

Tuerk said if his department gets the cash, the cemetery will get built.

"This will not be a satellite of Fort Logan, it will be a full-blown national cemetery and successor to Fort Logan," Tuerk said. "We anticipate building a cemetery in this area."