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U.S.
Senator Ken Salazar
Member: Agriculture, Energy, Veterans' Affairs, Ethics and Aging Committees
2300 15th
Street, Suite 450 Denver, CO
80202 | 702 Hart Senate Building, Washington, D.C.
20510
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Sen.
Salazar Continues Fight for Pikes Peak Veterans’ Cemetery
DENVER, CO
– Today, Senator Salazar continued to push for a veterans’ cemetery
in Colorado’s Pikes Peak region by urging VA Under Secretary of Memorial
Affairs William F. Tuerk to do everything he could to ensure that the
VA’s guidelines for placing veterans’ cemeteries accurately reflect
important and relevant factors including future need, travel difficulties,
and cultural realities.
In his letter, Senator Salazar
noted a number of unique factors that warrant a veterans’ cemetery being
sited in Colorado Springs, including:
- Future Growth:
Current VA guidelines set a threshold population of 170,000 veterans
in a region to create a new cemetery. However, this guideline fails
to account for future growth, such as projected troop increases at
Fort Carson combined with the existing 125,000 veterans currently
living in south-central and southeastern Colorado. “This community
is likely only to grow larger in coming years, these figures paint
a different picture of the military and veterans’ presence in the
Pikes Peak region than does VA’s most recent evaluation,”
wrote Salazar.
- Travel Time vs.
Travel Distance: Current VA guidelines set a strict 75-mile
threshold of travel distance for veterans to reach the nearest cemetery.
However, this guideline fails to account for a more reasonable measure:
travel time. “While Colorado Springs is within 75 miles of
Denver as the crow flies, due to traffic, it can take more than two
hours to travel between the two cities. VA’s guidelines should reflect
such considerations,” wrote Salazar.
- Cultural Realities
of Colorado: Current VA guidelines do not account for any
real-world considerations, relying instead on Washington bureaucrats
looking at maps and columns of numbers. “While Denver and
Colorado Springs are relatively close in terms of geographical proximity,
the community of Colorado Springs is the “center of gravity” for military
and veterans affairs in the state, and it represents the people and
communities of the southern and southeastern parts of Colorado, tying
together counties from my home in the San Luis Valley to those in
the Arkansas River Region and the Eastern Plains,” wrote
Salazar.
Senator Salazar’s letter
to Under Secretary William F. Tuerk is available by
clicking here.
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