As the spring planting season arrives in College Station, Texas, certified master gardener Mark Smith is thrilled that peace is in the air. This time last year, a loud buzzing noise began disrupting Smith’s morning routine of checking on the peppers, tomatoes, herbs, and shrubs growing in his backyard. Several times an hour, an Amazon Prime Air delivery drone would noisily emerge about 800 feet away, just past a line of trees behind Smith’s home. His neighbors began calling the fleet flying chainsaws. Smith, a retired civil engineer, preferred a different comparison: “It was like your neighbor runs their leaf blower all day long,” he says. “It was just incessant.”
Amid technical and regulatory challenges, Amazon’s decade-plus quest to fly small items such as toothpaste and batteries to people’s yards in under an hour has yielded just thousands of deliveries. The experience in College Station has highlighted another challenge: NIMBYs—or people who push for developments to be “not in my backyard”—potentially curtailing where Amazon operates.
Over the past few years, drone delivery companies have started operating in several towns and cities across the US without much fuss. The Federal Aviation Administration conducted environmental reviews of 21 planned drone rollouts over the past four years, none of which received more than three critical public comments or any organized opposition—except for one location.
In College Station, a university town of about 125,000 people, hundreds of ordinary residents along with the mayor and other officials banded together last year to oppose Amazon’s proposal to more than double the number of daily local drone flights. The FAA received about 150 comments opposing the plans, including from homeowners’ associations and other groups.
A parent said their teenage daughter feared using the swimming pool because of the drone’s camera. (Amazon says it faces forward, not down). A 92-year-old worried about doves that were no longer visible from a kitchen window. Many claimed their homes were losing value. One resident said their peace and quiet was being “invaded by some billionaire’s insatiable desire to make even more money.”
In early July last year, councilmember Bob Yancy emailed the mayor and two city officials, explaining that complaints would intensify if Amazon didn’t move the drones. “Amazon’s MO thus far is to conduct aggressive PR efforts writ large while ignoring the immediately affected neighborhood,” Yancy wrote, according to public records obtained by WIRED. “Without causing a public stink around their project, for their sake and ours, I think we need to quietly secure some assurances that they will act immediately to directly address neighborhood concerns.”
The FAA ultimately determined that some of the public concerns were meritless or outside its purview and that Amazon’s proposed expansion wouldn’t cause significant environmental impacts. But the local pushback still got through to the tech giant. Company representatives sought city officials’ help in getting contact information for homeowners’ associations near the drone depot, according to the email records. Meetings ensued between Amazon and homeowners, and by the end of July, Amazon communicated its intent to relocate within the city. (Yancy tells WIRED that Prime Air is a valued member of the community and, as long as it is mindful of the noise, he hopes it stays.)
Over the summer, Amazon reduced the number of drone flights. In November, it fully adopted newer, quieter drones in College Station that deliver within a range of about 7.5 miles. Inside his house, with the double-paned windows shut and TV on, Smith could no longer hear the drones. More recently, wet winter weather has further restricted the frequency of flights. (Amazon spokesperson Sam Stephenson says the drones can withstand only light rain and limited temperatures.)
But things finally went back to fully normal for Smith and other residents of the woodsy communities near Amazon’s drone base in January, when the company temporarily grounded its drones nationwide for a software update process that is ongoing. Amazon plans to end its College Station lease on September 30, potentially giving the frustrated communities permanent quiet.
If Amazon had conducted the maximum number of flights outlined in its plans reviewed by the FAA, a drone might have buzzed by Smith’s house about every 58 seconds for 15 hours a day. Now, he hasn’t seen one in weeks.
Residents say they have noticed wildlife return to the area. Paul Greer, who lives near the drone depot, says he heard an owl for the first time in months. Deer also are more abundant with the drones gone, he says. Even Greer’s dog, George, is at peace. Seeing and hearing the drones during walks agitated his 50-pound bull terrier. “I don’t think anybody expected the noise to be as invasive as it has been,” Greer says.
Amazon’s Stephenson reiterates that the FAA review determined that the operations would not have a significant impact on wildlife and says that College Station officials conducted a test that found the drones operated below the city’s noise limits. “We work hard to listen to the community and to mitigate any potential impact from our operations,” Stephenson says. Since the company launched its new MK30 drone, he says, it hasn’t “received any community complaints, and the feedback from local officials has been positive.”
Some of the College Station residents who have complained about the noise say they still largely support the testing of drones. But many believe Amazon miscalculated by locating its depot close to so many residences. The company’s first depot—now shut down—was located near businesses and vineyards in rural California. Its third and newest location is at one of its warehouses in a quiet Arizona town. A planned site in the UK is also based at a fulfillment center and largely bounded by fields and industrial parks. “I don’t think we should ban this,” Smith says of drone delivery. “If there’s a place for it, and the market needs it, then fine, but it shouldn’t mess up the peace in the neighborhood.”
Amazon’s drone sector rivals, such as DroneUp and Alphabet’s Wing, have made many more deliveries, mostly by operating out of commercial areas and forming partnerships with physical retailers. That’s not so easy for Amazon, the nation’s dominant online shopping platform. It has plenty of logistics warehouses, but they’re not necessarily located close enough to customers for delivery drones to reach them.
Location, Location, Location
Amazon has said little about how it chose the location of its College Station drone hub, which it began leasing in 2022. Residents such as Smith believe privacy may have played a role. The building Amazon leased is tucked away behind trees, limiting what might be visible to prying eyes. Stephenson, the Amazon spokesperson, says its choice of location involved “thorough analysis of the area” and “close collaboration with local leaders.”
Smith says that during a series of community events Amazon hosted in 2022, some College Station residents were miffed by how the company highlighted cookies rather than urgent necessities as items Prime Air could deliver. He and others also asked to see the drones in action to gauge how loud they might be, but the company refused. “We ended up getting it without actually hearing it,” he says. Amazon’s Stephenson says that the demonstrations weren’t possible, because the FAA didn’t approve the drones to take flight until the end of the year when commercial operations began.
As flights began picking up early last year, the people who live closest to the drone depot started fuming over the noise. Residents appealed to the city to do something, but Texas lawmakers have essentially banned cities from regulating drones, leaving local officials powerless.
Smith, who previously worked as a city public works director in charge of big projects, says the only developments that he had seen attract this amount of opposition were landfills. The drone pushback also attracted international media attention, sparking concerns at city hall.
Public records show city officials have suggested numerous options for Amazon’s potential relocation, including a mall about 4 miles up the highway from the current building. As of December, though, College Station mayor John Nichols wrote in one email, Amazon had not shared any recent updates about the status of its search. Nichols tells WIRED that as of last week, he still hadn’t heard anything.
Lessons Learned
Some College Station residents who live near Amazon’s drone depot site say the noise and property value concerns raised by their neighbors are overblown. “What were people like when lawnmowers first came out?” says Kim Miller, who could hear the drones above her front yard and once received a dog toy by air as a gift from someone. “Progress has some drawbacks,” she says.
Raylene Lewis, a real estate agent at NextHome Realty Solutions, which has listings near the drone base, says home buyers don’t seem to mind the prospect of drones overhead. In fact, more people are curious about whether a prospective home is within Prime Air’s delivery range, she says. Lewis’ own house happens to be just outside the perimeter, but she says she would love to use the service “whether I want cookies or my medicine or pen and paper for a kid’s project.”
Lewis believes Amazon should have been more forthright about its operations and should have offered a local customer service center for people with questions and concerns. With updates still difficult to come by, some residents remain frustrated. Several of them learned about Amazon’s fleet grounding only after inquiries from WIRED.
The grounding followed two crashes—one related to rainy weather and the other operator miscommunications—of the roughly 80-pound drones, according to Bloomberg. Amazon’s Stephenson disputes the cause of the pause, saying it was initiated to “safely and properly conduct a software update” and that services will resume following FAA approval.
The accidents have introduced a new worry in College Station. “These events really bring out that Amazon is using my neighborhood as a test zone,” says Monica Williams, a teenager who opposed the company’s expansion plan.
For now, more drones are poised to hit the skies. In Dallas-Fort Worth, Amazon rival Wing is awaiting FAA review to triple its maximum deliveries per day to 30,000. In Florida, the company is seeking review to provide up to 60,000 deliveries each day, starting from Walmart supercenters in the Orlando and Tampa metro areas.
Smith and others in College Station expect that as long as drones aren’t constantly buzzing near homes—and new versions get increasingly quieter—complaints will be minimal. He believes Amazon learned a valuable lesson in his city, and he’s glad the company is adjusting its course. His garden is certainly happy to have him back.
Additional reporting by Aarian Marshall.
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