Secretary Shinseki Announces Expansion of Jefferson Barracks Cemetery

WASHINGTON – Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki today announced the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is awarding more than $898,000 to URS Group Inc., a St. Louis-based company, to design a gravesite expansion project at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis.

“Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery is one of our busiest cemeteries,” Secretary Shinseki said.  “We will continue to serve the Veterans of Missouri by developing new burial areas and making improvements to existing facilities to maintain this beautiful national shrine.”

The design project for the facility operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is scheduled for completion in fall 2010.  It will develop approximately 13 acres and includes approximately 10,000 pre-placed crypts and 4,500 columbarium niches for cremated remains.  The project also includes an access road, irrigation system, landscaping, fencing, site utilities and site furnishings.

The cemetery, which serves approximately 263,800 Veterans in the St. Louis area, conducted more than 4,600 interments in 2008 and nearly 180,000 interments since opening in 1862.  This project will provide an estimated five additional years of burial capacity beyond the previously expected depletion date of 2015.

In the midst of the largest cemetery expansion since the Civil War, VA operates 130 national cemeteries in 39 states and Puerto Rico and 33 soldiers’ lots and monument sites.  More than 3 million Americans, including Veterans of every war and conflict – from the Revolutionary War to the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan – are buried in VA’s national cemeteries on more than 18,000 acres.

Veterans with a discharge issued under conditions other than dishonorable, their spouses and eligible dependent children may be buried in a national cemetery.  Other burial benefits available for eligible Veterans, regardless of whether they are buried in a national 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 <http://www.cem.va.gov/> , or by calling VA regional offices toll-free at 800-827-1000.  To make burial arrangements, call 800-535-1117.