VA facility planned in Walla Walla
WALLA WALLA – The Department of Veterans Affairs will build a $6.7 million residential mental health facility in this southeastern Washington city, the VA secretary announced here Tuesday.
Secretary James Peake said the 36-bed, 22,000-square-foot “regional recovery unit” will be built on the southwestern corner of the medical center grounds in Walla Walla. It will provide homeless and employment services, substance abuse treatment, support for recently released prisoners and other types of mental health care.
“This project supports VA’s commitment to provide for the health care needs of Washington’s veterans,” Peake said.
The secretary was accompanied by Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray and Republican U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers.
Murray said she was “delighted to see Secretary Peake make good on his commitment” to visit Walla Walla, a promise he made upon his Senate confirmation in December.
Peake’s announcement was unexpected: The Bush administration has proposed cutting the VA construction budget in 2009. Only the top four or five projects on the department’s priority list of about 30 are expected to be financed this year, Murray said.
In 2006, Peake’s predecessor, Jim Nicholson, announced the planned construction of a “state of the art” outpatient primary-care facility in Walla Walla. There are no immediate plans to break ground on that project, Murray said Tuesday.
“We’re going to keep their feet to the fire on that one,” Murray said.
Nicholson’s promise came after a 2003 VA commission recommended closing the Walla Walla medical center, including its in-patient psychiatric facility and nursing home. The medical center serves a population of about 69,000 veterans in southeastern Washington, northeastern Oregon and central Idaho.
Such was the outcry among local veterans, hospital union and civic groups in the region that Murray held a field hearing of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee in Walla Walla, which preceded Nicholson’s plan to build the clinic. But concerns about the future of psychiatric care in Walla Walla persisted until Tuesday.
In his proposed 2009 budget, President Bush calls for $93.7 billion to be spent on veterans, $3.4 billion more than this year – a figure that some say barely keeps up with medical inflation.
Next year, the VA expects to treat 330,000 Iraq and Afghan war veterans, a 14 percent increase over this year.