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. 

Source: Military.com | Patricia Kime | April 20, 2022