Amazon and other companies plan to open six distribution warehouses in the Sunset Park and Red Hood neighborhoods of Brooklyn.
This has created concern among residents as it increases environmental pollution as hundreds of trucks and other delivery vehicles will add to the streets of these neighborhoods daily.
“Because you get sick and you have to be curing yourself, because more because of the smoke they throw into the street, the noise, everything bothers,” said Juan Rojas, a resident of Sunset Park.
“I think we would be condemning ourselves to those emissions from so many trucks,” said Cristobal Silva, another neighbor.
For this reason, Brooklyn State Assemblywoman Marcela Mitaynes introduced a bill that seeks to reduce pollution from trucks and control the number of warehouses in certain areas.
“We are putting a pause on something that we know is going to have a long-term impact and we have to analyze it to understand how we are going to start correcting all of that,” Mitaynes said.
The size of these warehouses, five in Redhood and one in Sunset Park, is estimated to be more than 4 million square feet.
“In order to build these warehouses, they need industrial space, and where there is more industrial space, which is cheap and available, it is coincidentally in low-income neighborhoods,” Mitaynes added.
This proposal requires the New York Department of Environmental Conservation to implement regulations for increased use of electric vehicles.
It will also require warehouses to notify the public of the number of vehicles and trips they will make per day. In addition, it would be prohibited to open new warehouses in saturated industrial areas.
If they do not follow these regulations, these companies would be fined. Something that according to environmental activists is the most effective way to ensure that the law is complied with.
“The goal is to ensure that our community is not more vulnerable to environmental pollution, so that our community does not have to suffer more asthma, more respiratory problems,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE.
In part, the concern of residents, environmentalists and health professionals arises from the fact that in other areas of the city with a high volume of truck traffic, such as the South Bronx, there are high levels of asthma among the population.
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