This Memorial Day, local veterans are still waiting for Orange County’s first state veterans cemetery as World War 2, Korean War and Vietnam War veterans are increasingly dying. 

State and local leaders are promising the project is moving ahead at lightning pace while they’re unable to say when the project will be finished. 

Every city in the county endorsed a cemetery moving forward at Gypsum Canyon in Anaheim back in 2021, a pitch that was approved by the state Department of Veterans Affairs earlier this year. 

The first phase of the veterans cemetery would open up roughly 11,000 burial plots designated for veterans along with over 4,000 columbarium niches, according to the study by Huitt-Zollars, an engineering firm contracted by the state to review the site.

To review the study, click here. 

Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva, one of the elected officials who helped jumpstart a conversation on a cemetery over a decade ago, said she was “more optimistic than ever,” about the progress on the cemetery in a Wednesday morning interview. 

“It’s been a long fight, it’s been a fight of passion to make sure that our veterans who have served in so many of our conflicts around the world have a final resting place, and we are ready to march there with you,” Quirk-Silva said. “This will happen.” 

State Senator Tom Umberg, another one of the cemetery’s proponents at the statehouse and a veteran, said that while it is a “long and sometimes frustrating process,” to get a cemetery built “I am in it for the duration.” 

The veterans cemetery will be the first of its kind, allowing space for veterans, first responders, veterans of other nations allied with the US and it will sit across from a new county public cemetery, the county’s first new burial ground in over a century. 

[Read: Orange County is Running Out of Burial Ground in Public Cemeteries]

While price tags for the first phase of the cemetery stretch as high as $123 million, it remains unclear which of those costs will be paid for by the county or by the state because of their shared construction at the site for the shared infrastructure between the two cemeteries. 

“We were up at the Gypsum Canyon site just over two weeks ago and this discussion was had,” Quirk-Silva said, noting the cooperation would bring “immeasurable savings.” 

Nick Berardino, president of the Veterans Alliance of Orange County and one of the leaders of the movement to build the cemetery at Gypsum Canyon, said he hoped to see the cemetery open in a year and a half. 

“It’s difficult to be exact, but what’s important to know is that the incredible cooperation between the state, the county and the city of Anaheim, this thing is moving very fast,” said Berardino, who is a U.S. Marine Corps Vietnam combat veteran. “It’s difficult to predict.” 

The WW2 veterans are nearly all gone – out of the roughly 16 million who served, just under 120,000 were alive as of last year, according to the National WW2 Museum. 

As of 2020, more than 1 million Korean War veterans out of the 6.8 million who served were still alive, according to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs. 

And out of the 8.7 million men and women who served during the Vietnam War – 1964 to 1973 – roughly 6.4 million of them were still alive as of 2020, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. 

“We’re in the evening of our lives,” Berardino said. “Vietnam veterans were treated with disgrace when we came home. We should be treated with honor when we go home.”

Tim Deutsch, general manager for the county cemetery district, said his department is currently working with Anaheim city staff to rezone the site for a cemetery and get the necessary approvals in place to push ahead with construction. 

“We’re hoping to get some approvals over the next two to three months,” Deutsch said in an interview last week. 

Quirk-Silva said the approval from the Anaheim City Council should come some time in July. 

When asked about an opening date, Deutsch said he wasn’t sure when it would happen, but said things were moving along well. 

“We’re continuing to work in collaboration on both the overall development approvals and then our phase,” Deutsch said. “Everything has been positive.” 

Thora Chaves, a spokesperson for the California Department of Veterans Affairs, said the state is currently working on a grant application to the National Cemetery Administration, part of the national Veterans Affairs department, for more money to fund construction. 

Every city council member in the county but one voted to approve the Gypsum Canyon site in 2021 after years of debate over where to put a cemetery in Irvine. 

Eventually, that plan was killed, with veterans saying they got tired of dealing with political gamesmanship and constant changes that killed any chance for them to move forward. 

[Read: How Did Irvine Fail to Build a Veterans Cemetery After Nearly a Decade of Debate?]

Irvine Councilman Larry Agran, the one vote against the Gypsum Canyon site, is talking to his council colleagues about the issue on Tuesday, saying he’s found “several significant potential issues,” at the site from a state sponsored study reviewing the land. 

Agran’s proposal for a discussion sparked a strong response from the entire county board of supervisors and most of Orange County’s state representatives, who sent letters to the city council reaffirming their support of the Gypsum Canyon site. 

“We firmly believe that these concerns can and should be addressed without altering the course of this vital project,” state legislators wrote in their letter to the city council. “Changing the site at this juncture would not only delay the project but also disregard the collective voice of our community.”