Turns out not everyone was happy with Amazon’s attempts to launch delivery drones. In fact, College Station, a university town with roughly 125,000 residents, has been extremely resistant to the entire ordeal. And now, Amazon was forced to ground its delivery drone service, but not for the reason you might think.
Amazon has been trying to get its small drone delivery service off the ground for almost a decade. Despite the promise of delivering small items to you in under an hour, the program has come with some major obstacles to overcome—most notably what Wired refers to as NIMBYs.
NIMBYs—people who push for the drones to be “not in my backyard”—have been pushing back hard against the entire idea. The reason for this is because of how noisy and disruptive Amazon’s delivery drones can be. The residents of College Station pushed back against the service, and now Amazon has grounded them.
College Station is the only town where Amazon has encountered “organized opposition” to its delivery drone services. The townspeople banded together last year to oppose Amazon’s rollout of drone deliveries in the university town, and the FAA received roughly 150 comments opposing the plan.
These comments came from both homeowner’s associations and other groups, reports say. According to Wired’s report, one teenage girl feared using her family’s swimming pool because of the cameras on the drone, while an older woman worried that doves were no longer visible from her kitchen window.
Others claimed the excessive noise caused by the drones was causing the value of their homes to bottom out. The residents of College Station say they felt the only way they had to fight back was to cause a public outcry because, otherwise, Amazon would simply ignore their complaints.
As such, a council member of College Station wrote to the mayor and two city officials in early July of last year, explaining that complaints about the delivery drone service would continue to intensify if Amazon didn’t move the drones elsewhere.
Well, it seems the people of this Texas town have gotten what they wanted despite the FAA ruling that these public concerns were meritless or outside of its purview. Amazon has grounded the delivery drones in that area.
However, it isn’t because of the complaints. Instead, Amazon grounded them for a software update process. However, the reports suggest that Amazon did hear the townfolk’s complaints, and in response launched quieter, less intrusive drones in the area.
With Amazon’s College Station lease set to end in late September, the university town could finally get its peace and quiet back for good later this year. Or, perhaps Amazon will ramp back up its services with its newer, quieter drones. Only time will tell.
