- Decatur county residents say despite the economic impact a primate facility would bring to the city they are still highly concerned about possible risk to environment.
- Leader from the Decatur County Development Authority says industrial deals are private until the deal has closed.
- The city denies any involvement in the project outside of approving the 11 year tax breaks for the incoming primate project.
- Watch the video to see how residents addressed commissioners.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
A room packed with concerned neighbors when it comes to a primate facility coming to Bainbridge.
A packed room of neighbors voiced strong concerns despite leaders from city council denying involvement with the decision to bring a primate facility to the city.
Concerns of disease and lack of transparency were on the forefront of Tuesday night's city council meeting.
Their complaint, a multi-million dollar primate facility slated to be built on Pine town Road at the new industrial park in Bainbridge,” said a Bainbridge resident.
"Do any of you all live within a mile of the facility? Did anyone on the committee or any committee live within a mile of the facility?” asked another local neighbor in the Bainbridge area.
One by one, people addressed the city council explaining they weren’t included in the decision approving the facility nor did they think there was enough data to see if the facility is safe.
“Protect the kids… that's the biggest thing,” said a Bainbridge neighbor attending Tuesday's city council meeting.” We have elderly people on the west side that can not really speak for themselves. We need to do what's best for our community. We are Bainbridge and we love each other…"
City council leaders pushed back, explaining they had no part in the project's decision.
While they weren’t involved in the final decision they did approve the tax break clearing the path for the facility.
Back in December the county publicly announced that a primate husbandry was approved to come to Bainbridge.
The almost $300 mil. the project would raise primates that would later be sent off to research facilities.
I sat down with Rick McCaskill, the executive director for the Decatur County Development Authority who says the 11 year tax break is a normal process when it comes to recruiting new companies to come to town.
"There's a lot of misinformation out there.. But what [people] have to realize is this is a state of the art facility… It has a lot of safety built into it,” said McCaskill.
Neighbors said they fear that the security of the projected facility would be compromised during the event of severe weather.
Word of the facility caught the attention of 'People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' also known as PETA.
"Failing to identify and deal with the fact that they were importing and using monkeys who had these unintended infections, which were really compromising the science,” said Jones-Engle.
Senior science advisor for PETA, Lisa Jones-Engle has 30 years of experience in primate biomedicine.
She shared information with the Bainbridge City council that describes how diseases can move between humans and primates.
McCaskill assures the integrity of the facility and says there will be measures taken to avoid the spread of infection.
"These animals come in and are quarantined. They can not tolerate having a diseased animal in their population,” said McCaskill.
Currently the primate facility is on track to make its way to the city.
Neighbors tell me they plan to attend more meetings on the county level in the future.
