Tracking Amazon: the New Yorkers monitoring pollution from delivery hubs

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.

Hemmed in on three sides by water and on the fourth by the enormous Bronx-Queens Expressway, Red Hook is a quasi-island in south Brooklyn. Its low buildings and industrial waterfront make it feel suspended in time, and its relative quiet has long attracted residents looking for a small community in the big city.

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

In an investigation published last year, Consumer Reports and the Guardian found that Amazon opened the majority of its warehouses in neighborhoods of color, relative to the cities the facilities served. The warehouses were also in lower-income neighborhoods than typical in the surrounding city, we found.

Griffin also said the Red Hook facilities employed some people from the neighborhood, but would not share how many.

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

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