The Department of Veterans Affairs’ cancellation of a long-awaited $395 million VA clinic project that was to be part of Alameda Point’s redevelopment is drawing fire from Bay Area elected officials who call the decision “unfathomable.”
Beginning in 2014, the city of Alameda, the VA and the Navy began planning construction of a veterans health care center at Alameda Point, which served as a critical base for naval operations during World War II. The proposed plans would establish a modern outpatient clinic, a columbarium with 25,000 niches and offices on 112 acres.
With more than 42,000 veterans, Alameda County has the largest number of veterans across any county in the region – but there is no dedicated VA clinic located in the East Bay — resulting in complicated medical referrals that can make seeking care more difficult, according to a 2022 VA report. The report affirmed that a new VA hospital was needed in Oakland or Alameda Point.
In August, however, the Office of Congressional and Legislative Affairs published a memo stating that the VA no longer “intends to construct and operate” the Community Base Outpatient Clinic, the official name of the Alameda Point veterans project.
In a letter to VA Secretary Douglas Collins last week, Rep. Lateefah Simon, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Adam Schiff and Sen. Alex Padilla demanded an explanation.
“When we found out that we were on a list of legacy projects that the VA essentially jettisoned us, we were shocked,” Simon told Bay Area News Group. “It’s unfathomable, particularly with an administration that claims to want to support our veterans.”
Padilla criticized the stated intention of the VA to “dispose” of the site – a break from more than a decade of planning.
“Hundreds of millions in funding and years of restoration work have already been dedicated to this critical project to ensure those who dedicated their lives to our country have their health and burial needs met,” he said in a statement. “I call on the Trump administration to immediately reverse this cancellation and explain their decision to turn their backs on American heroes.”
The August memo cited sea level rise, “inaccessibility” to Alameda Island and contamination of Alameda’s groundwater by PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals, for shutting down the project, which puzzled stakeholders.
“After a thorough review of site conditions and Veteran population data, we believe this area is not suitable for these projects as it is contaminated with PFAs,” VA Press Secretary Pete Kasperowicz wrote to Bay Area News Group.
But local officials involved with planning the Alameda Point project said PFAS are a moot point, as the environmental review finalized in 2021 did not flag them as a public health threat that would impact the project. The city of Alameda, including Alameda Point, does not even get water from the ground, Alameda Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft said.
“We’re waiting to hear back on the PFAs study – which they’ve never shared with us – they used in (the) list of reasons for terminating this project,” Ezzy Ashcraft said.
Project stakeholders and Congressional representatives did not receive the VA’s explanation — which the letter from Bay Area elected officials described as “opaque” — until mid-September, Ashcraft said. The remaining project funds were canceled on Sept. 30 and were transferred to the VA.
Simon questioned the memo’s disregard for the regional plan to address Bay Area veterans’ needs for health services, which can often involve months-long waits for appointments.
She said she has raised her concerns about the suddenly canceled project with the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Chair Rep. Mike Bost, an Illinois Republican, and learned that numerous other long-term projects across the Bay Area had been had been terminated in similar fashion.
As of Thursday, Simon’s office still had not received a response from the VA.
“My goal is to have the full attention of the Veterans Affairs Committee in Congress and the office of Veterans Affairs to push to reverse this decision and others,” Simon said. “(Bost) was completely unaware of the project being jettisoned and canceled. He just he had no idea, and vowed to work with me to figure out what was going on.”