That’s why Red Hook residents, in collaboration with Consumer Reports and the Guardian, have installed air quality monitors and traffic-counting sensors near the new facilities. Environmental advocates have long called on warehouse operators to collect and publish traffic and air quality data, but since the companies haven’t done it, community members have stepped in.

Already the sensors show recurring periods of poor air quality in the past two months. Thirty percent of the time, tiny particulate matter—a major component of emissions from gas and diesel engines—was at a level the Environmental Protection Agency says can be harmful to groups sensitive to air pollution, such as people with asthma, but nonetheless labels “acceptable.” (Most of Red Hook has higher asthma rates than typical for New York City.) The rest of the time, air quality was in the “satisfactory” zone.

The sensors also picked up a decline in air quality in a span that coincided with the first two months of operation for the larger of the two Amazon facilities currently open in the neighborhood. Particulate levels were in the EPA’s “moderate” category 17 percent of the time in the first half of the monitoring period, and 45 percent of the time in the second half. Meanwhile, our vehicle-counting sensors also detected high levels of truck traffic on an important commercial corridor.

Since this early data was gathered while Red Hook’s two Amazon delivery centers were already operating, it’s impossible to say whether these trends are directly connected to the new facilities. But they do show that Red Hook’s traffic and air quality levels are already worrying—and will probably deteriorate as more facilities open in the neighborhood.

“First of all, it’s too many trucks,” says Tiffiney Davis, executive director of the Red Hook Art Project, a nonprofit that organizes classes, workshops, and tutoring for underserved students in the neighborhood. “These trucks shouldn’t be in a predominantly residential area, sneaking up in areas they shouldn’t be on. They’re putting children and families in danger."

In a statement, Amazon spokesperson Simone Griffin said the company “partners with community stakeholders” before choosing to open a facility in a new community. Asked whether Amazon tracks air quality or traffic patterns near its facilities, Griffin didn’t respond directly, pointing instead to Amazon’s pledge to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.

The situation in Red Hook is helping drive local and state legislation putting new restrictions on delivery facilities. These rules, if passed, could become a model for warehouse communities nationwide.

Red Hook’s industrial history planted the seeds for its new chapter as a warehousing hub. Two-thirds of Red Hook is zoned in such a way that last-mile operators can develop on it without asking special permission or notifying residents, according to an analysis by the Guardian and Consumer Reports. That’s how Amazon, UPS, and several commercial real estate companies first arrived, largely unnoticed.

“Right now, they are essentially unregulated,” says Alok Disa, a senior research and policy analyst at Earthjustice, a nonprofit legal organization. “The current zoning approach considers these massive e-commerce mega-warehouses to be the same as a traditional mom-and-pop warehouse that’s storing a bunch of furniture for a month or two.”

Residents and community leaders say they learned about the newcomers secondhand, rather than via formal outreach. “We went over and knocked on the door of the [construction] trailer,” says Catherine McBride, director of community building at Red Hook Initiative (RHI), a longtime neighborhood nonprofit. “That’s when we learned that it was Amazon.”

Amazon vehicles have added to the volume of trucks and vans constantly squeezing through neighborhood streets. Over the course of two months, a traffic sensor we installed on a main street counted nearly one truck per minute, on average, in the 11 o’clock hour. On one particularly busy day, the sensor detected nearly 2.5 passing trucks per minute between 11 and noon.

The minutes add up quickly: Our sensors captured passing trucks more than 3,900 times on an average weekday.

Some warehouse developers promised that the new facilities would bring job opportunities for local residents, not just traffic. Amazon has occasionally set up job booths during events at the Red Hook Houses, the large public housing development. It’s an attractive proposition for a neighborhood with high unemployment and a large proportion of low-income residents.

Not all residents are receptive to the overtures. “They’ve offered some jobs, but Amazon is not known to be the best of employers,” says Tevina Willis, a resident of the Red Hook Houses and community organizing manager at RHI. The Guardian reported on hazardous conditions at a large Amazon warehouse in Staten Island in 2020, and this year, workers at that facility cited poor working conditions as one reason for organizing a historic workers’ union.

And Mitaynes, the assemblymember whose district includes Red Hook, sponsored a state bill that would change how medium and large warehouses are regulated across New York. It would implement an “indirect source review,” a type of environmental regulation that exists only in a few places in the U.S. Under the proposal, warehouse operators would have to report publicly on the truck and van traffic they create, and prove to the state that the traffic won’t lead to any new air quality standard violations. They would also have to take steps to mitigate the harmful effects of the traffic, such as by electrifying their delivery fleets.

The interventions are united by a common worry: that clusters of facilities will threaten residents—especially kids and seniors—going to and from schools, public parks, senior centers, and other community centers.

These concerns loom large at Basis Independent Brooklyn, a private school for students grade 1–12 that sits cater-corner from a year-old Amazon Fresh facility, and one short block from the Amazon facility being constructed just off the waterfront. Red Hook’s truck route separates the school from the neighborhood’s enormous park complex—large portions of which are soon to reopen after a decade of closure to detoxify the fields—interfering with the school’s raucous daily drop-off and pickup routine.

“As a crossing guard, I’m worried about the uptick in traffic,” says Jo Golfarb, director of communications at the school. “There needs to be a limit on how many of these facilities can be built in one neighborhood. Otherwise, it’s just insanity."

To avoid dangerous run-ins with the new truck and van traffic, Basis moved its pickup and drop-off zone further away from the school, and it has considered moving its pickup and drop-off times to lessen the risk. Two other schools, a daycare, and a senior center also sit on the busy truck route.

For Willamae Boling, a research librarian who lives between the Red Hook Houses and the Amazon Fresh facility, the uptick in truck and van traffic spells danger. It’s one reason Boling started asking questions about the new facilities in the neighborhood.

“My dad was killed by a driver, and that reoriented my whole life,” Boling says. “I look at these and I only see the potential for someone to die. I think it’s very likely."

Methodology: We gathered the data for this article using traffic-counting instruments made by a Brooklyn company called Numina, and air quality monitors from PurpleAir.