Residents of a Texas suburb where Amazon is testing out its delivery drones say that the aerial vehicles make too much noise.
The mayor of College Station, the town located some 100 miles northwest of Houston, fired off a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration last month to protest the drones, which some residents have likened to a “giant hive of bees.”
College Station, which is best known as home to the flagship campus of Texas A&M University, is a testing ground for Amazon, which hopes to perfect the technology that it says will allow drones to make deliveries of products within an hour of customers ordering them online.
“Since locating in College Station, residents in neighborhoods adjacent to Prime Air’s facility have expressed concern to the City Council regarding drone noise levels, particularly during take-off and landing, as well as in some delivery operations,” College Station Mayor John Nichols wrote in the letter.
Nichols’ letter was written in response to Amazon’s request seeking permission to expand its pilot program to 469 delivery flights per day — up from its current level of 200 a day.
Amazon wants to make drone deliveries from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. — beyond the current limit of daytime hours.
The retail giant also wants to increase the delivery area to a radius of 174 square miles from its drone port — up from its current operating range of 44 miles.
If Amazon’s request gets approved, it would see up to 940 combined takeoffs and landings of drones that would deliver one package at a time — each of them weighing no more than five pounds.
John Case, a resident of College Station, told CNBC that the buzzing sound of Amazon drones has become a nuisance.
“It sounds like a giant hive of bees,” Case, a semi-retired orthodontist, told CNBC. “You know it’s coming because it’s pretty loud.”
According to Case, the drones are loud enough to wake up nurses, firefighter and police officers who come home after working the overnight shift.
Residents appealed to local lawmakers in College Station to intervene in Amazon’s expansion plans.
At a June city council meeting, one resident who lives “less than 500 feet away from the launch pad” played a recording of a chainsaw to highlight the noise level generated by the drones.
“This is what Amazon is asking the FAA to approve,” Ralph Thomas Moore, the resident who played the chainsaw audio, told city council members in June.
“This is a huge invasion of our personal space and has significant impact on everyone in the neighborhood.”
The city ran its own audio test to gauge the noise levels generated by the drones. It found that the drones reached decibel levels between 47 and 61 — well short of chainsaws, which typically measure at 125 decibels.
In 2013, then-Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced that his company was planning to develop drone delivery through Prime Air with the goal of delivering packages within 30 minutes.
Two years later, the FAA granted Amazon permission to test its drones in the US on condition that they remain within the pilot’s line of sight and that they fly during daylight hours.
But the drone program has struggled to gain momentum due to cost-cutting measures implemented by Bezos’ successor, Andy Jassy.
Another US test site — Lockeford, Calif., which is just south of Sacramento — was abandoned by Amazon in April. The company did not cite a reason it wound down operations there.
Amazon said it would seek to begin testing drones in Tolleson, Ariz., just west of Phoenix. Regulators have yet to sign off on the project.
The Post has sought comment from Amazon.
A company spokesperson told CNBC: “We appreciate the community of College Station and take local feedback into account wherever possible when making operational decisions for Prime Air.”
“We’re proud of the thousands of deliveries we’ve made and the hundreds of customers we deliver to,” the spokesperson added.