Amazon faces fierce community backlash over plans for new facility: 'We didn't just make some stuff up'

Amazon said opening a distribution warehouse in Essex, Vermont, will help it better serve the region. However, residents weren't convinced the move was in their best interest and voted down the proposal, according to a local outlet called VTDigger. 

What's happening?

Opposition to Amazon's proposed 107,000-square-foot facility near Saxon Hill Road stretched into late July after residents expressed their concerns about the project at an hours-long meeting June 26, according to the Burlington Free Press.

Previously, residents had bashed the endeavor as threatening the character and well-being of their community, with one person declaring at a May meeting about the matter that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos "can find another way to make a billion or two," per NBC5.  

Residents expressed similar concerns in June, citing fears about burdensome traffic, harm to small businesses, and health and environmental impacts, including the proposed destruction of 23 acres of woodland, as the Free Press and VTDigger previously reported.

Why is this important?

The Amazon warehouse would bring hundreds of jobs to Essex, but numerous Vermonters have argued that the large corporation doesn't align with their Green Mountain values. 

While Amazon has added electric vehicles to its delivery fleet and is reducing plastic in some of its packaging, actions that do make a difference, the company is still responsible for massive amounts of pollution. Amazon's commitment to artificial intelligence (and the energy-intensive data centers that house AI) is one factor in its environmental footprint. 

Fortunately, Amazon has been a forerunner in pushing for cleaner, more energy-efficient, and less water-hungry data centers, including as the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy. And, more broadly, the adoption of clean energy to power data centers is growing. Yet critics argue that some of Amazon's projects are not as eco-friendly as they appear to be. 

What is being done about this?

The Essex Development Review Board held an executive session, during which it voted to request additional information from Amazon representatives regarding the project's estimated traffic impact before it further considers greenlighting construction.

"Through our conversations, we find that one of the most important and vital pieces to us is really the greater detail about the traffic studies," board chair Ian Carroll said, per VTDigger.  

Jonathan Greeley, Amazon economic development lead in New England, wasn't pleased by the decision, stating that a previous traffic-impact study submitted by Langan Engineering "more than accurately overestimated what our traffic impact is going to be."

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"It's in light of our own self interest that if we're putting forth traffic counts and putting forth projections, and if we know we're going to be monitored, that we're accurately doing so, and so I just want to make sure the board understands we didn't just make some stuff up," he said. 

Regardless, Essex residents stood firm in their opposition to the project, arguing that they hadn't been given the same consideration to make their case as developers and criticizing town leadership. 

"With buffers cleared, paradise gets lost to make a parking lot for Amazon town," Ken Signorello, chair of the Essex Conservation and Trails Committee, sang in a protest song shared by VTDigger.

In this case, it seems, Essex residents appear to have known what they got well before it was gone, and for now at least, it looks like Signorello and Co. won't have to worry about losing their paradise.

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