Two congressmen in a letter this week to President-elect Obama’s designated Secretary of Veterans Affairs said that French Camp is the best place to build a nursing home for veterans because of how close it is to an existing outpatient clinic and several major freeways.

Reps. Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton, and Bob Filner, D-San Diego, also asked in the letter to incoming Veteran Affairs secretary, retired U.S. Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, to revisit the decision by his predecessor to close the Livermore Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

In their first official endorsement of the French Camp location, the congressmen brought up points raised by veteran advocacy groups for a long time now. First off, the San Joaquin County is home to 42,000 veterans. Second, it’s close to major freeways. Third, the French Camp site in question is close to the San Joaquin County General Hospital outpatient clinic that already treats thousands of veterans every year.

Stanislaus County, too, is vying to get the clinic built in Modesto, but folks from the Veteran Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System said they’ve met more with San Joaquin County officials than anyone else. The county has offered what the veterans group called a good deal on land near the general hospital.

A valley clinic wouldn’t get built until sometime around 2015 at the earliest, according to the Palo Alto veteran group.

McNerney and Filner — the House Veteran Affairs Committee chairman — urged Shinseki to keep the Livermore clinic open because its “peaceful, serene setting” makes it an ideal place to treat veterans who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression.

McNerney’s position has long been to keep the Livermore clinic open, especially since U.S. involvement in Iraq is creating a new generation of veterans, said his spokesman Andy Stone.

“We shouldn’t be shutting down services that help veterans when the need for those services is only increasing,” Stone said. “But (McNerney) at least wants to make sure the Livermore site remains in veterans hands.”

The V.A. hired a consultant in December to assess whether the Modesto or French Camp location would be better suited for a nursing home. They said they’d make a decision in a few months about where to place it.

President of the Tracy War Memorial Association, John Treantos, said the endorsement is promising because it came from lawmakers who could lobby for the money to build such a clinic.

“We’ve been pushing for this for five or six years now,” he said. “Ever since we heard that they wanted to close the Livermore clinic.”

Treantos said he’s sure that despite the financial crisis affecting every tier of government, he believes a clinic would get federal financing because “it’s the type of thing that needs to get built, and would boost the economy.”

How much a nursing home would cost is still an unknown at this point. In fact, most the details are still up in the air.

In Tracy — which has the highest number of war deaths per capita in the nation — 700 veterans belong to local veterans groups, but Treantos said there are several more in town.

Right now, the only special medical treatment veterans get is through an outpatient clinic at the county hospital. Veterans who need inpatient treatment travel to Palo Alto or the East Bay.

To see the letter, go to http://mcnerney.house.gov/pdf/joint_Filner_letter_01-14-09.pdf.

• Contact Tracy Press reporter Jennifer Wadsworth at 830-4225 or jwadsworth@tracypress.com.