Three Massachusetts state lawmakers have asked Amazon to pause its proposed Prime Air drone delivery hub in Westborough until the company answers residents on operating hours, flight paths, service range and the number of flights a day. State Sen. Michael Moore, D-2nd Worcester, state Rep. Kate Donaghue, D-19th Worcester, and state Rep. Hannah Kane, R-11th Worcester, made the letter public on Tuesday, September 29. It is addressed to Tareq Wafaie, the Amazon economic development policy manager who presented the plan to a packed Westborough hotel ballroom on September 23.
I sat through that presentation. Wafaie told the room Amazon hopes to launch from its 64 Otis Street warehouse, possibly by the end of October, with about six MK30 drones and several hundred deliveries a day inside a 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) radius.
The letter arrived one day after Massachusetts joined 14 other states in federal court against the Federal Aviation Administration over the environmental clearance new drone delivery hubs run on.
Lawmakers Say Amazon Left Hours, Routes and Flight Counts Undetermined
The letter says Amazon’s own outreach left the scope of the Westborough operation confused, with operating hours, flight paths, service range and daily flight counts still undetermined, and calls it unfair to ask the community to evaluate a proposal on those terms. It asks Amazon to pause until it answers.
The letter, as MassLive quoted it, credits Amazon with sharing information with officials and the public and says the sharing itself left the scope unclear. It lists the constituent concerns as noise, frequency of flights, flight path, operating hours, privacy, safety, drone cybersecurity and environmental impact, and calls them valid. The Shrewsbury Post, which also reviewed the letter, says it cites videos of a Prime Air drone dropping a package into a pool and of one crashing into a residential apartment building, plus news reports of noise complaints in Texas and Nebraska. It also puts Prime Air at 13 cities across 10 states and repeats Amazon’s plan to reach more than 500 communities by the end of the year.
Moore, in a statement released with the letter, drew the line between trucks on neighborhood streets and “flying dozens of camera-equipped drones in the skies above our homes.” He called Amazon’s Westborough warehouse a net benefit to the region and said launching over unresolved concerns could damage the company’s relationship with the community, Patch reported. Kane said people inside Amazon’s range “need to be able to trust that their questions will be answered.” Donaghue cited residents’ “serious concerns regarding the environmental impact of drones on wildlife, especially birds.” At the September 23 forum, Wafaie said Amazon ran no peer-reviewed wildlife study of its own and relies on the FAA’s review.
The letter’s sharpest line is about jurisdiction: “A federal permit does not reflect the community’s trust and support.”
Only Westborough’s Launch Pad Is Up for a Vote, and Amazon Set No Pause
The pause request has no legal hook. Westborough’s Planning Board, resuming its hearing on site-plan application 26-02275 on October 6, can rule only on the fenced pads and trailers in Amazon’s Otis Street parking lot. The FAA controls the flights, and Amazon hopes to hold every other approval by year-end.
Those remaining approvals are the FAA’s site-specific environmental review, which a member of Amazon’s airspace team said the agency was still working on, and a MassDOT Aeronautics inspection and registration of the landing area. Wafaie said Amazon had none of them yet, and the Drone Delivery Tracker lists the hub as in review. He also said about 80% of the communities where Amazon has proposed a hub approved it administratively, with no public hearing, as DroneXL reported from the room in Amazon Tells Packed Westborough Room Its Drones Are Coming Anyway. Westborough is in the other 20%, and an independent resident survey DroneXL covered on September 28 had 92% of 853 respondents opposed.
Westborough’s Select Board has called a special meeting for Thursday, October 1, at 6 p.m. in the Forbes Municipal Building, with a 7 p.m. item on comments to send the Planning Board and a 7:45 p.m. item on next steps with the town’s legislative delegation, according to the agenda Patch published.
None of Tuesday’s reports carried an Amazon response to the letter, and WBZ-TV said it had asked. Amazon’s most recent statement on Westborough, from spokesperson Jack Stelzner earlier this month, said the company is working with local officials to bring the service to the area. Spokesperson Lindsay Hamilton told the Boston Globe this week that customer response in other markets has been overwhelmingly positive and that fewer than 1% of customer-service inquiries about Prime Air involve noise. In the ballroom, the only item Wafaie floated as negotiable was operating hours, and he said he was not committing to anything.
Massachusetts Joined a Lawsuit Against the FAA Clearance Amazon Needs
Massachusetts is one of 15 states, plus Harris County, Texas, that asked the Second Circuit on September 28 to set aside the FAA’s July 28 nationwide environmental finding for drone package delivery. New York Attorney General Letitia James filed for the coalition. The petition does not yet argue the case.
Every Part 135 delivery approval the FAA has issued since July 28 rests on the document the states want thrown out, and no stay has been requested, so approvals continue, as DroneXL reported in FAA Sued by 15 States Over Drone Delivery Clearance Amazon Runs On. Amazon told the September 23 room it does not yet hold the FAA’s sign-off for Westborough. The January comment letter that preceded the suit built its safety argument on the October 1, 2025, Tolleson, Arizona, crane collision, and DroneXL added the February 2026 strike on a Richardson, Texas, apartment building to that list. The lawmakers’ letter does not name the location of the apartment crash it cites, as reported. The filmed MK30 apartment strike in DroneXL’s file is Richardson, on February 4, 2026, and it is the one I asked Wafaie about on September 23. He did not address it.
DroneXL’s Take
Amazon should grant this pause, and I say that as someone who wants delivery drones to succeed. Three of the four things the lawmakers asked for, hours, routes and flights per day, are things Wafaie would not pin down for a room of several hundred people on September 23, and the eight safety questions DroneXL sent Amazon on September 4 are still unanswered too. A company that has these answers for other cities and withholds them here looks worse than one that stops to produce them.
The pause request carries no force, and by Wafaie’s own count 80% of Amazon’s proposed hubs never faced a public hearing. But the letter’s argument, that a federal permit is not community consent, is close kin to the one Massachusetts is now making in the Second Circuit: that the FAA cleared drone delivery nationwide with no information about the communities underneath. Launching in October on an FAA sign-off that would rest on a clearance fifteen states are asking a court to vacate, over a town whose legislators asked you to wait, is how a company earns the moratoriums Castle Rock and Parker already passed. Watch Thursday’s Select Board meeting for whether Westborough asks its delegation for a state bill, and October 6 for whether the Planning Board votes on the pad before Amazon has answered the four questions.
Sources: MassLive, CBS Boston / WBZ-TV, Shrewsbury Post, Patch, Boston Globe, Petition for Review, New York et al. v. FAA.
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
