BATON ROUGE — They didn’t have torches and pitchforks but the crowd at a community meeting about Amazon delivery drone complaints was hostile enough that the Amazon representative got a police escort out of the building when it ended.
More than 100 people gathered in the fellowship hall at Broadmoor Methodist Church at a meeting organized by Metro Councilman Cleve Dunn.
From frustration with the noise the delivery drones make to fears of an errant drone crashing into a house or even a kid outside playing to worry about bird migration and property values, most of the people who attended the meeting were there to demand adjustments to Amazon’s delivery drone program which began in July.
Bob Storer, who lives in Broadmoor, said he documented 18 drones passing over his house in 21 minutes on a Sunday morning.
“I can clearly hear them from inside my home,” Storer said.
Some residents questioned why the drones were not flying higher to reduce the noise for people on the ground.
Laennec Ratard, a program manager in the FAA’s Flight Safety District Office in Baton Rouge, explained that the drones cannot fly above 400 feet because emergency services like Air Med can fly as low as 500 feet.
Mike Limburg, who represented Amazon at the meeting, got repeatedly chastised by audience members for not directly answering questions. Limburg said several times that the company wants feedback about the problems the drones are creating and will work to improve the process.
The drones deliver within a 7.5 mile radius of the warehouse facility at the site of the old Cortana Mall and can only carry packages that weigh five pounds or less. Amazon Prime members pay 4.99 per delivery. The fee for non-members is $9.99.
Christina Boone said she sees several drones a day just walking from her house to her car. It’s particularly annoying on weekends, she said.
“Every one to three minutes, a drone buzzes by,” she said.
Her husband Blake Fugler said he works at a nearby cemetery. He said the drones “interrupt people trying to bury their loved ones.”
Alli Scardino said it can be difficult to estimate how high the drones are flying. Amazon says the outbound drones that have packages to deliver should be flying between 200 and 250 feet.
The ones she sees at her house aren’t nearly that high.
“That’s a 20-story building,” she said. “We are seeing it entirely too low.”
Scardino said she has canceled all her sales subscriptions with Amazon and switched to Walmart, but she said she doubts even a broad boycott would make a difference.
“Jeff Bezos doesn’t care,” she said.
Leah Marchand said she and her husband looked for years before buying their house in Tara subdivision. She wanted a place where kids could play outside without being in danger of getting hit by cars.
“Now I’m worried about them getting hit by drones,” she said.
Susan Bartols said the problems she and neighbors are seeing may require new laws to control. Elected officials and committed residents will be needed for that.
“We’ve got to take control of our own environment,” she said.
In her research, she learned about drones being used to fly emergency medical supplies across difficult terrain in Rwanda.
Here it’s people getting Pop Tarts, facial wipes and toenail clippers, she said.
“We don’t need this,” she said.
Dunn pledged to have another meeting in a few weeks to see what progress has been made. He said he will see if the city-parish noise ordinance an be adjusted to make it possible to regulate excessive drone noise.
He said the public has ways to hold Amazon accountable. The company is now getting a 10-year property tax abatement. When that ends in five years, Amazon will want it renewed.
That gives the public, and city-parish government, some leverage moving forward, he said.
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