Please click on
image to view
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Aerial view of the homes assessed in the following chart. Homes were approx. 1/2 mile near the laboratory. |
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Chart, property values fell by an average of 16% and homes lost an average of $43,078 in assessed value in this subdivision near Covance's destroyed facility in Reston, VA. |
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Declining Property Values Graph |
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While
Covance claims they have safeguards and security precautions in place in
case of a bio-hazard scare, their history shows otherwise.
In 1989, there was an accidental outbreak of the Ebola virus at a
facility in Reston, Virginia. Covance (then known as Hazelton Labs)
abandoned the property after US Center For Disease Control personnel
came with bio-hazard suits to sanitize the facility and kill the
remaining monkeys. Neighbors living nearby were left with blight and a
chemical-infested, crumbling building which sat vacant for years until
it was finally bulldozed and the land given away.
To demonstrate in a quantitative way how the property values fell in the
years following this incident, we chose the nearest subdivision of
houses and focused on the tax-assessed values, specifically how they
declined following the outbreak.
(View charts to the left.)
In a
comparable Reston neighborhood not near the outbreak site, the assessed
property values stayed the same
throughout this three-year period.
 Special
thanks to the Fairfax County Dept of Management & Budget for providing
additional data. CAC is proud to report that during this same
three-year period following the Ebola virus outbreak in Reston, the
average property values in the whole county
increased by
8.5%,
while the tax-assessed values in the Hazelton-adjacent neighborhood
decreased by
16.0%
from 1990 to 1993.
Covance claims they are careful and have backup precautions and
safeguards in place to insure that this type of thing won't happen
again. If that's true, why was there another outbreak in 1990? Yet
another shipment of Ebola-infected monkeys was imported to its Alice, TX
facility in 1990 and then again in 1996! Not to mention the
recent outbreak of tuberculosis in their Madison facility, which
Covance failed to publicly disclose. When will the next outbreak
occur?
The book "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston was based on this very
publicized
incident in Reston, as was the movie "Outbreak" starring Dustin Hoffman. Can you
imagine if something like this happened in Chandler?
Is this the type of thing we want our fine city to be in the history
books for? The risks are just too great. Please take a moment to send an
email to the city mayor & council members. Tell them you're a resident
of Chandler, and you care about the health and safety of your family - Covance has no
business here.
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