A design-build contract could be awarded this fall for a new VA national cemetery in Sarpy County.
The Omaha National Cemetery will be located along South 144th Street/Highway 50. Kristen Parker is a spokesperson for the National Cemetery Administration. She says the new VA cemetery will serve 112,000 veterans in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa.
"Those are veterans that are not currently served with an open national cemetery within 75 miles of their residence. So what that means is, we go out and we look at the veteran population, and we try to make sure that there's some burial option for them within a 75 mile radius."
Parker says once construction begins, it’ll be 16 to 20 months before the cemetery opens. The VA says the cemetery will have about 5,500 internment sites.
The VA bought the land for the cemetery in December 2012 at a cost of $6 million.