Plans for Orange County’s first veterans cemetery are about to come before Anaheim City Council members, marking one of the last big legislative steps veterans face to get construction moving on the project.
But veterans still had plenty to celebrate ahead of the Fourth of July after the project unanimously passed through the city planning commission and state leaders announced an additional $5 million in funding.
That brings the total funding on the project to $50 million from the state and county governments, with the California Department of Veterans Affairs announcing they’ve asked the federal government for a grant of up to $10 million that could also go toward the project.
“We are one step closer to fulfilling our commitment to those who have bravely served our nation,” said Assemblywoman Quirk-Silva (D-Fullerton) in a news release last month. “Securing this funding, as well as applying for this grant, will ensure that we can move forward effectively.”
There’s still no set date for a groundbreaking, or details on what the final costs will look like beyond a state study that put the costs for the first phase at a high of $123 million.
But because county leaders are building a public cemetery next door, there are plans to split the infrastructure costs between the two projects, even though a final split hasn’t been worked out yet according to Tim Deutsch, general manager of the OC Cemetery District.
“Informally we’ve had that discussion that there would be some shared costs for access and resources,” Deutsch said in a Wednesday interview, adding it would be split “proportionately” between the two projects.
In a Monday phone interview, Nick Berardino, president of the Veterans Alliance of Orange County, said he hopes to see the cemetery breaking ground by the end of 2026 after it’s approved by the Anaheim City Council.
“My guess is if the weather remains good they’ll start turning dirt in 18 months,” said Berardino, who was a combat Marine in the Vietnam War. “I’ve been around for 51 years – I have never seen the entire county so excited about a project.”
Veterans tried to get a cemetery for over a decade in Irvine, but after multiple sites were thrown out by divided city councils, they moved to a plot of county-owned land in Anaheim’s Gypsum Canyon in 2021.
It’s a move that was supported by every city council member in the county but one – Irvine Councilman Larry Agran, who’s continuing to push for a veterans cemetery in the city.
[Read: How Did Irvine Fail to Build a Veterans Cemetery After Nearly a Decade of Debate?]
When completed, the state veterans cemetery in Anaheim will bring 11,000 burial plots alongside a planned county public cemetery next door.
Deutsch said he also hoped to see the cemetery break ground in 18 months if not sooner, noting a shortage in public cemetery space that is starting to become a countywide pinch.
[Read: Orange County is Running Out of Burial Ground in Public Cemeteries]
Right now, there are just over 600 public cemetery spots left at the El Toro Memorial Park cemetery, which should last another year to a year and a half, according to Deutsch.
If they run out of space, they plan to tear up roads in the Santa Ana cemetery and put in more burial plots there, giving the county a max of three and a half years before they’re out of cemetery space.
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.
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