Editor:
I’m a homeowner who lives on Branders Bridge Road, right across the street from the proposed Motoaca Megasite in Chesterfield County. And because of it, I’m about to lose a lot of money.
My wife and I put our house on the market last August, three weeks before the announcement of the megasite. And now we can’t get anyone to look at our house. We had a full price offer a few months ago, but the buyer backed out when they found out about the megasite. We’re gonna need to drop the price significantly to sell now. And if we sell, we will lose a huge part of our retirement.
And we’re not the only ones. They are putting the megasite right in the middle of several neighborhoods. There are about 1,000 to 2,000 homes located within a quarter-mile of the megasite. If these houses each lose about $50,000 to $100,000 in property value, that’s $1 million! That’s a lot of money and a lot of families that will suffer huge financially losses.
Who will pay for that? These houses won’t be eminent domain. CEDA won’t pay for it. Not the county. Not the project. Nobody. Over 1,000 residences will be financially ruined by this. We could have never anticipated this.
But wait a minute. That’s not what the county is saying. The report on their website says that there is no positive or negative effect within a 1.5-mile radius.
But statistics can be misleading. They know the houses right next to the site will suffer significant financial losses. They state this in the report. And the report says the effect tapers off within six-tenths of a mile and has no effect. It’s all in the report. So, if they take all the houses right next to the site and average them with all the houses that are not affected, they just need to keep going out until the average shows no effect. That works out to be about 1.5 miles.
So, the county knows that many residents will be significantly impacted. But they are willing to ignore them and say that there is no net impact. They are turning their backs on the hard-working tax-paying citizens.
Allen Wilson
