“Last mile” delivery warehouses in New York may be hit by regulations

Brendan Parker, assistant director of Red Hook Farms, said he regularly smells exhaust fumes rising from a line of delivery trucks leaving an Amazon warehouse across the street from the nonprofit’s sprawling farm on Columbia Street in Brooklyn.

“We have seen a huge increase in traffic around the facility,” Parker said, noting a steady stream of vehicles loaded with goods headed to nearby communities. “You’ll see 40 delivery trucks leaving in two minutes.”

Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has been inundated with complaints from local residents about pollution, pedestrian safety and other hazards associated with last-mile e-commerce warehouses. The authorities now promise to address the problem.

In a recent letter to City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer promised that the administration would support future regulations to reduce pollution associated with e-commerce warehouses and propose other rules to limit the creation of new facilities.

The potential changes would mean the most important regulation regarding facilities in the city’s history to date. They have proliferated since e-commerce surged during the pandemic, with little oversight from city officials.

An Amazon spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Environmental justice advocates cite data showing that e-commerce warehouses, called “last mile” facilities because they represent the final stage of direct-to-door delivery, are concentrated in lower-income communities of color that are already burdened by air pollution, traffic and other environmental harms. environment.

A January report by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund found that 1 in 4 New York state residents live within a half-mile of a mega-warehouse of more than 50,000 square feet. Local councilors, environmentalists and neighbors say the number of such facilities has increased, especially in Red Hook, Sunset Park, parts of Williamsburg and the South Bronx.

The Adams administration agreed to new warehouse rules as part of negotiations over the mayor’s larger commercial real estate plan, called “City Yes to Economic Opportunity,” according to a letter to the council president and other council documents. The initiative is the retail and business component of Adams’ broad, three-part “City Yes” plan to update the city’s zoning laws to allow for more housing, invest in renewable energy and make it easier to do business in the city.

Last week, the Council approved the “Economic Opportunity” package, which includes 18 changes to spatial development rules. Councilors and the administration say that there will be regulations regarding last mile warehouses.

In her letter, Torres-Springer promised that the mayor’s team would present a bill this year that would allow the city’s Environmental Protection Department to regulate air pollution caused by vehicle traffic at a given warehouse. She also wrote that the Department of City Planning will propose changing zoning rules to require special permits for last-mile warehouses. She said the department would publish a draft scope of the proposal by the end of March 2025.

According to council member Rafael Salamanca Jr. from the South Bronx, who chairs the zoning committee, a new special permits process would give the council the final say on approving last-mile warehouses. Such a permit could also require an environmental review of last-mile facilities to ensure they won’t have negative impacts on nearby traffic, pedestrian and road safety, or air pollution, said Councilmember Alexa Avilés, who represents Sunset Park and Red Hook.

Salamanca said he and other council members would oppose the City Yes for Economic Opportunity plan if the administration didn’t agree to regulate last-mile storage. “It’s getting to the point where you have to use the power of your voice to get the city’s attention,” he said. “There was just no interest in it and it felt like do or die. It was a chance, a perfect opportunity.”

Casey Berkovitz, a spokesman for the city planning department, said in a statement that it was “too early” to provide details about the warehouse and the special permitting proposal. He added that the department “will work with stakeholders and experts… to inform any potential policy.”

The Adams administration’s promises came after Avilés and 28 other council members — a majority in the 51-member Legislature — sent a letter to Department of City Planning Director Dan Garodnick in early April calling for more regulation of last-mile warehouses.

“We have been eating this piece for three years now,” Avilés said. “And it’s good to finally see some real commitments.”

Two years ago, she and an environmental group called the Last Mile Coalition proposed changing the city’s zoning laws to require special permits for last-mile warehouses. Their proposal would ban warehouses within 1,000 feet of schools, parks, nursing homes, public housing complexes and other such warehouses.

Once the Council approves the Mayor’s City for Economic Opportunity plan, the City Planning Commission and Council must vote again on the proposal. According to Salamanca, both bodies are expected to give the final green light to the plan.

He, Avilés and environmental advocates said they will closely monitor whether the Adams administration meets the deadlines set out in the Torres-Springer letter.

Alok Disa, senior research and policy analyst at EarthJustice, a national environmental organization that is part of the Last Mile Coalition, said he would also pay attention to the technical details of the city’s future policy. “The devil may be in the details,” he said.

Still, Disa said, “this is perhaps the biggest step forward in last-mile regulation of any municipality that I have seen across the country.”