North Haven Amazon Drones: How to File With CT DEEP Before Oct. 1

Residents of North Haven, Hamden, Wallingford and New Haven have until Thursday, October 1, to file a comment with Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection on Amazon’s plan to fly up to 1,000 MK30 delivery flights a day from its warehouse at 409 Washington Avenue. DEEP opened the 15-day window on September 16, when it published the Federal Aviation Administration’s request for a finding that the hub is consistent with the state’s Coastal Management Act, and it owes the FAA an answer by October 16.

It is the only public comment window DroneXL can find open on the project in Connecticut. North Haven’s Planning and Zoning Commission approved Amazon’s delivery building in May and has nothing further on its agenda, the Connecticut Airport Authority took a briefing whose minutes say “general update,” and the FAA has posted no environmental document for the site.

The review DEEP is running was built for docks and dredging, and the FAA’s own request says the warehouse sits outside the coastal boundary.

The 7.5-Mile Circle Reaches New Haven Harbor and the Edge of Tweed

The FAA document DEEP is reviewing sets a 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) delivery radius, about 174 square miles (451 square kilometers), around 409 Washington Avenue. Measured from the warehouse, that circle takes in all of Hamden and North Haven, downtown New Haven and Yale at 5.6 miles, Wallingford’s center at 6.2 miles, and the centers of North Branford, East Haven and Branford between 5.8 and 6.9 miles.

Long Wharf on New Haven Harbor sits 6.3 miles out, inside the circle. Tweed New Haven Airport’s field sits at about 7.6 miles, on the line, and the FAA document does not mention it, as DroneXL reported when the comment window opened. Cheshire’s center is 9 miles out, so only its southern edge falls inside; Bethany, Woodbridge and West Haven each have a strip within reach. DroneXL measured those distances from the warehouse address. The FAA has not published the operating-area map, and Amazon’s actual delivery boundary can exclude any of them.

The circle’s coastal content is the Quinnipiac River, which runs tidal through North Haven and Hamden about a mile from the warehouse before it reaches the harbor. North Haven and Hamden are both named in the act’s definition of the coastal area, Conn. Gen. Stat. § 22a-94(a), as DEEP’s own coastal area map layer records, and the tidal marsh along the river is the coastal resource closest to the launch pad.

The aircraft is the same one Amazon flies everywhere: 78 pounds (35 kilograms) empty, 83.2 pounds (38 kilograms) at takeoff, a 5-pound (2.3-kilogram) payload, a cruise between 205 and 370 feet (62 to 113 meters), and a descent to about 13 feet (4 meters) to drop the package on the lawn. It carries no parachute in any FAA filing DroneXL has read. The FAA request gives operating hours of 6 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., seven days a week, with up to 100 of the 1,000 daily flights in the first hour and the last half hour.

North Haven Approved a Building in May, and the Next Date Is October 1

North Haven’s commissioners approved application P26-17, a Prime Air Drone Delivery Center at the Washington Avenue warehouse, by a 5-0 vote on May 4, with three conditions: a revised site plan, replacing unusable parking spaces with lawn, and a $5,000 bond. The approved minutes record none of the flight details Amazon has given elsewhere.

The minutes list Amazon’s presenter, Sam Bailey, as “Project Manager, Amazon Services,” and have him describing 70-pound drones carrying packages of 5 pounds or less within seven miles. The Register Citizen’s account of the same meeting, carried by GovTech, identifies him as an economic development manager and adds the promise of a public information session, which the minutes do not record and which had not been announced when DroneXL searched for one on September 26.

The arithmetic is DEEP’s, as spokesperson Bill Flood gave it to the New Haven Register: 15 days from a September 16 publication runs to October 1, and 60 days from the FAA’s August 17 request runs to October 16. The Board of Selectmen meets the first Thursday of each month at 6:30 p.m. at Memorial Town Hall, 18 Church Street, and October 1 is that Thursday. The town had not posted the October 1 agenda when DroneXL checked on September 28; the board’s regular meetings carry a public comment period, according to its minutes.

The FAA’s drone environmental review index listed no Connecticut, North Haven or New Haven document when DroneXL checked it on the morning of September 28. The page was last updated September 24. Whether the hub gets a site review of its own or is checked against the national finding the FAA signed on July 28, with no draft and no comment period, is the question no Connecticut document answers, and it is the question a comment to DEEP can raise.

DEEP Rules on Coastal Policy, Not on Noise or Hours

Under the federal Coastal Zone Management Act and the Connecticut Coastal Management Act, Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 22a-90 through 22a-112, DEEP decides one thing: whether the FAA’s action is consistent with the state’s enforceable coastal policies. Its Land and Water Resources Division ends every review with a concurrence or an objection. It does not decide airspace, altitude, hours, noise limits, or whether Amazon may fly.

DEEP’s coastal consistency page lays out the process under 15 CFR part 930 and cites the statute. The FAA’s request already argues the answer: the site is inland, outside the coastal boundary, no construction takes place in the coastal zone, and drone overflights inside the radius are transitory, according to the document the Hartford Courant published on September 19. A comment that says “too loud” or “not over my house” gives DEEP nothing it can act on within that frame.

A comment lands when it ties to a coastal resource or to the record DEEP is being asked to sign. Flight paths over the Quinnipiac tidal wetlands and what an 83-pound aircraft does to waterfowl there. Where an MK30 puts down when it fails over the river or the marsh: Amazon told a Westborough, Massachusetts, forum that the aircraft picks the nearest open area that is not a road or a building, and that the company keeps no map of landing sites. The harbor inside the circle, which the document does not name. And the absence of any site-specific FAA environmental document for DEEP to review against, which means DEEP is being asked to concur with a national analysis that never looked at the Quinnipiac.

The noise numbers belong in the file too, because the FAA’s own figures for this Amazon aircraft come from another state. The FAA’s Baton Rouge filing, Appendix B, puts MK30 takeoff and landing at 90.5 and 91.8 decibels SEL measured 20 feet from the aircraft, the delivery hover at 92.1 decibels SEL measured 25 feet away, and a drone cruising overhead at 200 feet (61 meters) at 63.7 decibels SEL. Amazon’s Prime Air operations manager in Baton Rouge, Tyra Jones, told the Rotary Club of Baton Rouge on September 9 that the drones are quieter than an idling delivery truck, as DroneXL reported from The Advocate’s account. The FAA’s own reference point for the 92.1 figure is a diesel truck at 50 feet.

General noise objections go to the FAA’s noise inquiry page and to the town, not to DEEP. Amazon’s own channels are in DroneXL’s guide to what residents can still do.

Connecticut Law Bars Towns From Regulating Commercial Drones

Connecticut settled the local question in 2017. Public Act 17-52, codified at Conn. Gen. Stat. § 7-149b, says no municipality may enact or enforce an ordinance that regulates the ownership, possession, use, transportation or operation of a commercial unmanned aircraft. The one carve-out is for a municipality that is also a water company, over its public water supply and watershed land.

That closes the lever towns in other states still hold. A North Haven noise ordinance written for drones, or a Hamden flight-hours rule, would run into the state statute before it reached the federal preemption question, because the act’s language reaches “use” and “operation,” not only the aircraft itself.

Connecticut has no drone-specific trespass or privacy statute. The Judicial Branch’s law library page on drones lists Public Act 17-52, the 2025 weaponization ban, and the general statutes on privacy and nuisance; nothing there addresses low overflight of private property, and DroneXL found no such provision in the General Assembly’s public act index when it searched on September 28. The state has no aviation agency of its own with jurisdiction here: the Connecticut Airport Authority runs Bradley and five general aviation airports, Tweed is not among them, and airspace is federal.

Three Levers Remain: the DEEP File, the Ground, and the Records

The DEEP comment is the first and it closes Thursday. A comment filed before October 1 goes into the record the FAA receives with DEEP’s decision, whichever way DEEP rules, and DEEP sets no minimum length or format.

The second is the ground. Public Act 17-52 leaves the launch pad to the town: site plans, bonds, fencing, lighting, ground-operation hours at the pad, and the conditions the commission attached in May. P26-17’s $5,000 bond and revised-plan conditions are still the town’s to enforce, and the Board of Selectmen meets on the deadline day with a public-comment slot. In Westborough, Massachusetts, where Amazon told a packed room its drones were coming anyway, the Planning Board’s site-plan review of the pads is the one local vote left, and it resumes October 6.

The third is paper. Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Act, Conn. Gen. Stat. § 1-200 and following, reaches the town and the Connecticut Airport Authority alike. The records to ask for: the P26-17 application file and any correspondence between Amazon and the First Selectman’s office; whatever the Airport Authority’s executive director, Michael Shea, was shown before he told his board on September 23 that Amazon had “coordinated extensively with the FAA,” a briefing the draft minutes do not record; and DEEP’s own file, including the FAA’s August 17 request and every comment received.

DroneXL asked North Haven First Selectman Michael Freda’s office and Hamden Mayor Adam Sendroff’s office on the afternoon of September 28 whether their towns were notified of the DEEP review and whether they will comment; neither had answered at publication. Wallingford and New Haven had not been asked. This article will be updated with any reply.

Who to Contact Before October 1

The comment address circulating in North Haven, on a flyer posted to the Town of North Haven CT Community Forum on Facebook, is [email protected]. DEEP’s own 2020 comment notice for its coastal program names Karen Michaels, Environmental Analyst, Planning Section, Land and Water Resources Division, CT DEEP, 79 Elm Street, Hartford, CT 06106-5127, at that email, and the division’s general permit inbox is [email protected]. DroneXL asked DEEP on September 28 to confirm the address and the project name for this review and had no answer at publication; put “Amazon Prime Air, North Haven, federal consistency” in the subject line and copy the division inbox.

North Haven’s Board of Selectmen meets October 1 at 6:30 p.m. at Memorial Town Hall, 18 Church Street; the Town Clerk’s office at the same address, (203) 239-5321, takes records requests. State Senator Paul Cicarella’s 34th District covers all of North Haven and Wallingford and parts of East Haven and North Branford; State Representative Dave Yaccarino’s 87th District is North Haven alone. Hamden and New Haven residents can find their legislators through the General Assembly’s district lookup.

The FAA takes drone questions at [email protected] and 844-359-6982, and noise complaints through its inquiry page. Amazon takes drone-delivery calls at 1-888-280-4331; by chat, open the customer service page on Amazon, choose “Something Else,” then “Amazon Drone Delivery.”

For what Amazon’s neighbors have already learned elsewhere: Richardson, Texas, where one resident counted 52 overflights in a day and Amazon raised its altitude after complaints; Tolleson, Arizona, where two MK30s struck the same crane minutes apart; and every hub and incident on the record in DroneXL’s Amazon Prime Air tracker.

DroneXL’s Take

North Haven approved a building. Nobody in Connecticut has reviewed the flying, and the one office taking comment on it is being asked whether an inland warehouse harms the coast. My read is that the FAA sent the coastal request because the law requires it and for no other reason, and that if the North Haven hub is being checked against the July 28 national finding, DEEP’s file is the only public record Connecticut will ever have. That makes the file worth filling with the specific things DEEP can act on: the Quinnipiac marsh, the harbor, the missing site document. I’m for drone delivery when the cargo justifies the flight, and Zipline’s P2 shows how to do it: 55 pounds empty, a tethered drop from about 300 feet, two parachutes. The MK30 weighs 83 pounds to carry 5, descends to 13 feet over the lawn and has no parachute, and both Tolleson collisions ended in uncontrolled descents. That judgment is mine. The deadline is DEEP’s, and it is Thursday.

Sources: Connecticut DEEP, Coastal Consistency, Town of North Haven Planning and Zoning Commission minutes, May 4, 2026, FAA NEPA and Drones, FAA Baton Rouge Draft EA Appendix B, Connecticut Public Act 17-52, Connecticut Judicial Branch Law Library, The Register Citizen via GovTech, New Haven Register, Hartford Courant.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.