This week I learned about Amazon Prime Air’s plans to build a drone launching pad in Westborough.

From my years of city living, I’ve learned the value of peace and quiet. My husband and I feel so lucky to live in a quiet setting like Hopkinton, where we can listen to wood thrushes and look out on peaceful woods. No one who chose this area of New England wants the constant noise and visual pollution from an army of drones.

Along with the total disregard for residents in its flight paths, what’s been most alarming to me about Amazon Prime’s plans is how little research I see conducted on the ecological region of New England: how the drones, and the repetitive amount of them carving invisible paths through our skies, would affect wildlife and humans over time in densely populated and forested areas.

Questions keep coming up in my mind, questions like:

• What, if any, restrictions are placed on the numbers of drones, and the number of Part 135 commercial operators using this low-altitude airspace on a daily/weekly basis? Once Amazon is approved, it’s only a matter of time before more companies want access for their drones.
• How do we quantify the quality of life for humans in relation to legitimate and well-documented noise pollution and privacy concerns?
• How does this technology and its chronic sound affect our wildlife and the plentiful spaces in our forests they call home?
• How do we quantify the diminished real estate value of homes that will inevitably find themselves in the most efficient and therefore incessantly utilized direct fly zone pathways, fielding potentially hundreds of drones flying overhead each and every day?
• How do we ensure drones from Amazon and other companies are not carrying out constant nor occasional surveillance?
  What do we want our future skies, and the land below, to look like for our children and our grandchildren?

We, the residents of Massachusetts, demand a moratorium on any drone center plans and deserve to conserve our health and peace.

The Westborough Select Board will be meeting on Thursday, Oct. 1, to discuss the Amazon proposal. Visit massblueskies.org [a grassroots community website] to learn more.

— Jenna Gavula, Hopkinton

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