NY bill regulates environmental impact of mega-warehouses
The 200,000-square-foot Amazon facility in Syosset, just off the LIE. Credit: Gary Licker
ALBANY — The State Legislature is expected to consider a bill that would create air quality standards around mega-warehouses cropping up statewide to serve the growth in online sellers.
On Long Island alone, more than 11 million square feet of warehouse space has been proposed or built, including a 200,000-square-foot Amazon facility in Syosset, with some community leaders opposing the massive structures with trucks entering and leaving 24 hours a day.
The warehouse growth is the result of an explosion of e-commerce led by Amazon, Walmart and Target. The warehouses allow the companies to deliver products soon after they are ordered online, and bring jobs and tax revenue to industrial zones.
The proposed Clean Deliveries Act seeks to set standards for air pollution and traffic congestion created in mostly lower-income areas, from Buffalo to towns along the Long Island Expressway, often in neighborhoods of color.
The proposal would require a permit process to evaluate current and future warehouses and incentivize property owners to cut carbon emissions by reducing their traffic or using electric vehicle fleets, alternative transportation and solar powered operations. Enhanced mitigation measures aim to protect nearby schools, playgrounds, parks, hospitals, senior centers, nursing homes and neighborhoods.
“Our communities experience real worsening effects from these facilities in the form of pollution, posing health risks, safety, as a result of traffic violence, and natural disasters, as we face a future of climate catastrophe,” said Assemb. Marcela Mitaynes (D-Brooklyn), a sponsor of the bill. “And yet, these effects are not recognized because either the trucking emissions are not sufficiently monitored or because regulations to oversee these facilities have not been effectively implemented.”
The bill states that the growth of e-commerce warehouses near major highways from Buffalo to the Hudson Valley, the outer boroughs and Long Island generates so much pollution from trucks that it threatens the goals under the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, known as CLCPA. The 2019 law requires the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 and by at least 85% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels.
"We have fought hard to improve our air quality by enacting the nation-leading CLCPA, fighting fossil fuel power plants, and pushing for more electrification, but we cannot allow those to be stymied by the proliferation of e-commerce warehouses,” said Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Queens), the Senate’s deputy majority leader and sponsor of the bill.
Known as “warehouse sprawl,” the facilities can be equal to the area of 15 football fields and operate in urban industrial areas and suburbs that provide quick access to major highways to shorten delivery times to homes and businesses. Use of the warehouses was already rising before COVID-19, but e-commerce and the warehouses needed to support it accelerated quickly during and since the pandemic.
Currently, hundreds of trucks arrive and depart from these warehouses around the clock in the Bronx, Brooklyn, the Hudson Valley and upstate cities and along the Long Island Expressway. The warehouses can be erected or modified from older buildings without public review or permits in areas that are already zoned for industrial use.
The bill, however, said these mega-warehouses weren’t envisioned in previous zoning and air quality protections. Trucks to and from the facilities are creating pollution hot spots, unlike smaller, older generation warehouses that had fewer delivery arrivals and departures, according to the state proposal.
The bill seeks to regulate noise, road damage, the creation of “heat islands” in summer, stormwater runoff and accidents that can come from the larger warehouses. It would apply only to warehouses of 50,000 square feet or greater or to owners and operators of warehouses with 500,000 square feet or more of “heavy distribution warehouse space.”
Spokesmen for Amazon, Target and Walmart — leaders in the field of e-commerce — didn’t immediately respond to repeated request for comment.
The companies’ websites point to environmental quality efforts underway.
Amazon has set its own goal of zero carbon emissions by 2040.
“Traditionally, these trips have been made by gas-powered internal combustion engine vehicles,” Amazon states in its 2022 annual report. “While these are still common across the industry, we are working to decarbonize our own last mile fleet by utilizing lower-emission options, including EVs, electric cargo bikes (e-bikes), and on-foot deliveries.”
That includes adding 2,600 more electric vehicles to U.S. operations last year with a goal of 100,000 by 2030.
Walmart has a goal to reduce or avoid 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, with more than 750 million metric tons achieved this year, according to Walmart’s sustainability report.
Target states it is on track to reach its 2030 goal of “100% renewable electricity.” Target already has achieved its interim milestone, with 60% of our electricity from renewable sources and reduced emissions by half from 2017 levels, the company stated. The company states it contributed more than $100 million from 2015 to 2021 to local Black communities near its operations.
Alok Disa, senior research and policy analyst for Earth Justice, a nonprofit environmental law advocate, called the initiatives "very rosy climate goals that they talk about in their news releases, especially now."
“They do great commercials about it, but they are not bound to that … it shouldn’t be voluntary," Disa said. "They should move to zero emissions at a pace set by our government officials.”
“Whether you are in a community that lives near one of these facilities or in a community that doesn’t house one of these mega warehouses, you see the impact of it on the roads, in your neighborhood with the bottlenecking,” Disa said. “We just think it’s time there are rules of the road."
ALBANY — The State Legislature is expected to consider a bill that would create air quality standards around mega-warehouses cropping up statewide to serve the growth in online sellers.
On Long Island alone, more than 11 million square feet of warehouse space has been proposed or built, including a 200,000-square-foot Amazon facility in Syosset, with some community leaders opposing the massive structures with trucks entering and leaving 24 hours a day.
The warehouse growth is the result of an explosion of e-commerce led by Amazon, Walmart and Target. The warehouses allow the companies to deliver products soon after they are ordered online, and bring jobs and tax revenue to industrial zones.
The proposed Clean Deliveries Act seeks to set standards for air pollution and traffic congestion created in mostly lower-income areas, from Buffalo to towns along the Long Island Expressway, often in neighborhoods of color.
WHAT TO KNOW
- The State Legislature is expected to consider a bill that would create air quality standards around mega-warehouses that serve online sellers statewide.
- The bill states the growth of warehouses generates so much pollution from trucks that it threatens the state’s goals under its Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.
- The proposal would require a permit process to evaluate current and future warehouses and incentivize property owners to cut emissions by reducing their traffic or using electric vehicle fleets, alternative transportation and solar-powered operations.
The proposal would require a permit process to evaluate current and future warehouses and incentivize property owners to cut carbon emissions by reducing their traffic or using electric vehicle fleets, alternative transportation and solar powered operations. Enhanced mitigation measures aim to protect nearby schools, playgrounds, parks, hospitals, senior centers, nursing homes and neighborhoods.
“Our communities experience real worsening effects from these facilities in the form of pollution, posing health risks, safety, as a result of traffic violence, and natural disasters, as we face a future of climate catastrophe,” said Assemb. Marcela Mitaynes (D-Brooklyn), a sponsor of the bill. “And yet, these effects are not recognized because either the trucking emissions are not sufficiently monitored or because regulations to oversee these facilities have not been effectively implemented.”
Mega-warehouse 'sprawl'
The bill states that the growth of e-commerce warehouses near major highways from Buffalo to the Hudson Valley, the outer boroughs and Long Island generates so much pollution from trucks that it threatens the goals under the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, known as CLCPA. The 2019 law requires the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 and by at least 85% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels.
"We have fought hard to improve our air quality by enacting the nation-leading CLCPA, fighting fossil fuel power plants, and pushing for more electrification, but we cannot allow those to be stymied by the proliferation of e-commerce warehouses,” said Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Queens), the Senate’s deputy majority leader and sponsor of the bill.
Known as “warehouse sprawl,” the facilities can be equal to the area of 15 football fields and operate in urban industrial areas and suburbs that provide quick access to major highways to shorten delivery times to homes and businesses. Use of the warehouses was already rising before COVID-19, but e-commerce and the warehouses needed to support it accelerated quickly during and since the pandemic.
Currently, hundreds of trucks arrive and depart from these warehouses around the clock in the Bronx, Brooklyn, the Hudson Valley and upstate cities and along the Long Island Expressway. The warehouses can be erected or modified from older buildings without public review or permits in areas that are already zoned for industrial use.
The bill, however, said these mega-warehouses weren’t envisioned in previous zoning and air quality protections. Trucks to and from the facilities are creating pollution hot spots, unlike smaller, older generation warehouses that had fewer delivery arrivals and departures, according to the state proposal.
The bill seeks to regulate noise, road damage, the creation of “heat islands” in summer, stormwater runoff and accidents that can come from the larger warehouses. It would apply only to warehouses of 50,000 square feet or greater or to owners and operators of warehouses with 500,000 square feet or more of “heavy distribution warehouse space.”
Company goals
Spokesmen for Amazon, Target and Walmart — leaders in the field of e-commerce — didn’t immediately respond to repeated request for comment.
The companies’ websites point to environmental quality efforts underway.
Amazon has set its own goal of zero carbon emissions by 2040.
“Traditionally, these trips have been made by gas-powered internal combustion engine vehicles,” Amazon states in its 2022 annual report. “While these are still common across the industry, we are working to decarbonize our own last mile fleet by utilizing lower-emission options, including EVs, electric cargo bikes (e-bikes), and on-foot deliveries.”
That includes adding 2,600 more electric vehicles to U.S. operations last year with a goal of 100,000 by 2030.
Walmart has a goal to reduce or avoid 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, with more than 750 million metric tons achieved this year, according to Walmart’s sustainability report.
Target states it is on track to reach its 2030 goal of “100% renewable electricity.” Target already has achieved its interim milestone, with 60% of our electricity from renewable sources and reduced emissions by half from 2017 levels, the company stated. The company states it contributed more than $100 million from 2015 to 2021 to local Black communities near its operations.
Alok Disa, senior research and policy analyst for Earth Justice, a nonprofit environmental law advocate, called the initiatives "very rosy climate goals that they talk about in their news releases, especially now."
“They do great commercials about it, but they are not bound to that … it shouldn’t be voluntary," Disa said. "They should move to zero emissions at a pace set by our government officials.”
“Whether you are in a community that lives near one of these facilities or in a community that doesn’t house one of these mega warehouses, you see the impact of it on the roads, in your neighborhood with the bottlenecking,” Disa said. “We just think it’s time there are rules of the road."
Michael Gormley has worked for Newsday since 2013, covering state government, politics and issues. He has covered Albany since 2001.
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