Redstone items of all types dont work in certain areas for some reason. I thought the issue was only comparators with command blocks but this whole area is a redstone dead zone. Levers, redstone dust, comparators, you name it. I believe it is a chunk issue as I created a redstone border around the area by creating a two block wide line of redstone dust around the area and activated it with levels in which what resulted was a cut between activated and deactivated redstone dust. The dead appears to consist of 5 chunks in my world and is a great hinderance.