Orange County leaders committed $20 million on Tuesday, July 27, for a veteran’s cemetery in Anaheim Hills, saying the project that has been at a standstill for years needs a push ahead to provide a final resting place for vets.
The Orange County Board of Supervisors unanimously supported the allocation, which would come from the county’s general fund, and they declared their support for using the county-owned property in Gypsum Canyon for developing the first official state-backed veteran’s cemetery in Orange County. Supervisors said some have long envisioned a veterans cemetery nestled among the hills there and they hope to get the state on board with the idea. Anaheim city leaders recently gave the idea their public support.
“This gives us a fighting opportunity to get a veterans cemetery that we have been trying for years to get elsewhere,” Supervisor Don Wagner said, referring to a lack of progress on two proposed locations in Irvine where disagreements on where to build have stonewalled the project for a number of years.
County leaders have been eyeing the roughly 260-acre Gypsum Canyon property south of the 91 freeway and east of the 241 toll road, where a public cemetery is already planned, as an option that could incorporate a dedicated section for military members.
Having the land already in its possession is a “main benefit” to building the project there, Supervisor Doug Chaffee said. The property was given to the county in 2014 by the Irvine Co.
“You don’t have to argue about it, we have it,” Chaffee said of the land. “And now we’re going to show our support for the cemetery by putting our money where our mouth is.”
The funds could be used to help plan the project and prepare the hilly property for development.
Veterans at the meeting voiced their support for the Anaheim Hills location and finally getting a chance to maybe break ground on the project. Bill Cook, chairman of the Orange County Veterans Memorial Park Foundation, said the contribution from the county “will move this cemetery forward” after the impasse in Irvine.
A recently completed study of the two proposed locations in Irvine by the California Department of Veterans Affairs, or CalVet, estimated a 100-acre site in the Orange County Great Park that had been slated for a golf course could cost up to $75 million to develop as a cemetery, and a 125-acre site known as ARDA on the park’s northern border could run as much as $110 million.
The ARDA location was the first site proposed, but the second site later emerged as an alternative because of the potential clean-up costs. Over the years residents’ concerns, ballot measures and council divisions have stymied progress on either.
The state agency has not looked at the Anaheim Hills property.
The opposition experienced at times as he lobbied in Irvine felt to veteran Nick Berardino like the hostility faced returning from the Vietnam War, he told supervisors at the meeting.
“We got booed, we got hissed. Just like we came home from the airport in Vietnam,” said Berardino, who is the president of the Veterans Alliance of Orange County. “It was really reliving that experience.”
The possibility to finally progress with the proposed funding had him “speechless,” he said.
Some canyon residents expressed their concerns over potential challenges building up the site on the sloping landscape and possible wildfire danger.
Supervisor Lisa Bartlett acknowledged the likelihood Gypsum Canyon will be expensive to develop, but noted the opportunity the land provides to get the project moving. An estimated cost for the cemetery is still undetermined.
Board Chairman Andrew Do noted time is running short to get a space dedicated as more veterans reach older ages, including those who fought in the early years of the Vietnam War when he was a child.
“We need to move ahead, we need to have closure, we need to have finality,” he said. “We can’t let this go on year after year, when the generation that sacrificed so much, they are going older in age.”
