Governor Maura Healey’s office says it is reviewing a request from 16 Massachusetts state legislators to create a task force on commercial drone delivery and to stop every state agency from accepting or processing a certificate application from a drone delivery operator until that review is done. The lawmakers sent the letter to Healey, Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll and Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell on Monday, October 19. It is the state-level answer to Amazon’s plan to fly Prime Air MK30 drones from its warehouse at 64 Otis Street in Westborough, and it went out the same day Westborough voters voted 510 to 13 to ban commercial drone pads, a bylaw the attorney general and MassDOT Aeronautics still have to approve.
The letter names no state agency as the one to freeze, but it is copied to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. At its September 23 Westborough meeting, Amazon said it did not yet have its remaining approvals, which include a MassDOT Aeronautics inspection and registration of the landing area, and hoped to have all of them by year-end, as DroneXL reported from that meeting. Boston.com reported the next day that Amazon was still awaiting approval from the Aeronautics Division.
Healey’s Office Is Weighing Options and Has Not Endorsed the Freeze
Healey spokesperson Jacqui Manning told State House News Service, in a report the Boston Globe ran on October 21, that the office has been closely monitoring Westborough. “We are evaluating our options to make sure that the community’s interests are protected,” she said.
The statement, as the Globe quoted it, named neither the task force nor the freeze. The administration pointed instead to the multistate lawsuit Massachusetts joined against the FAA. Senator Michael Moore, D-Millbury, whose office released the letter, told the news service he wants the state to impose the freeze immediately. He said federal preemption can leave the state unable to speak for its own communities, and he asked whether drone delivery is worth it to Amazon if opposition keeps spreading and costs it customers.
The Letter Targets the Ground End of Drone Delivery, Which the FAA Leaves to States
The 16 legislators ask the state to plan where commercial drones take off and land before it approves any site, and to freeze certificate applications until a task force reviews the Commonwealth’s rules and recommends changes. The letter names 15 cities and towns Amazon could reach in whole or part.
Those communities are Ashland, Berlin, Boylston, Grafton, Hopkinton, Hudson, Marlborough, Millbury, Northborough, Shrewsbury, Southborough, Sutton, Upton, West Boylston and Worcester. The letter says they “have suddenly found themselves opted into a new form of air commerce” because Amazon believes it can add drone takeoff and landing to an existing distribution center by right under zoning rules, and it says that leaves the state no say in planning where drone hubs go.
The legal footing is the FAA’s own July 2023 fact sheet on state and local regulation, which the letter quotes: states “have a valid interest in choosing where aircraft may operate on the ground,” and laws designating takeoff and landing locations have no direct effect on where drones fly. The lawmakers acknowledge that Congress and the FAA control the airspace and ask the state to use the authority it keeps.
The letter cites no statute, so the certificate it means is my reading of the Massachusetts rules. Under 702 CMR 5.01 and M.G.L. c. 90, § 39B, nobody may establish an airport, heliport or restricted landing area without a certificate of approval from MassDOT’s Aeronautics Division. The exemption for private landing areas covers non-commercial use, and a Prime Air pad is commercial. Section 5.03 of the same regulation says the application goes in at least 90 days before the site is first used, and the division holds a public hearing in the town before it issues anything. Amazon said on September 23 that flights could begin as soon as late October, and This Week in Worcester reported on October 19 that the zoning appeal had pushed the expected start to at least early November. A filing on the day Amazon spoke would put the earliest permitted use on December 22 (September 23 plus 90 days). If MassDOT treats the pad as the certificated landing area Amazon described, a freeze on that certificate would, as I read the regulation, hold the Westborough pad at the state level whatever the Zoning Board of Appeals decides.
The letter also raises health care and public safety facilities, which often have landing sites of their own, and says siting a drone hub wherever a warehouse already stands ignores them. It names DoorDash, which earned its own FAA Part 135 certificate on July 29 and has talked about delivering “a coffee or hot meal,” as an example of why the state should set rules for every operator now rather than for Amazon alone.
“Our window to regulate drone delivery services is closing,” Moore said in the statement that released the letter. Representative Hannah Kane, R-Shrewsbury, said drone delivery “once started will spread statewide.” Moore, Kane and Representative Kate Donaghue wrote the September 28 letter that asked Amazon to pause. This time they are joined by Senators Robyn Kennedy, James Eldridge, Ryan Fattman and Peter Durant and Representatives Meghan Kilcoyne, James Arena-DeRosa, James O’Day, David Muradian Jr., Carmine Gentile, Daniel Donahue, Joseph McKenna, Paul Frost and David LeBoeuf. Moore’s office says Amazon hopes eventually to make up to 1,000 deliveries a day from Westborough. Amazon told the September 23 meeting it would start with about six drones and several hundred daily deliveries.
Worcester Asks for an Amazon Forum and Turns Down a Zoning Review
Worcester’s City Council voted October 20 to ask City Manager Eric Batista to arrange a community forum with Amazon “as soon as possible,” and it turned down Councilor-at-Large Gary Rosen’s second order, which asked the city solicitor about zoning control of drone launch sites.
The zoning order did not get enough support to pass, the Worcester Guardian reported, and the paper gave no vote count. “All I’m asking is some recommendation or some information from the city solicitor,” Rosen said. Vice Chairman Khrystian King backed the forum and said he supports bringing Amazon in for a community discussion.
This Week in Worcester pointed out before the vote that an adopted order is only a request. Section 2-3 of Worcester’s charter says the council deals with the city’s administrative service “solely through the city manager,” so Batista decides whether to hold the forum, and nothing in the order can make Amazon attend. The same outlet reported that Amazon had not publicly addressed the forum request as of October 19, and that neither Amazon nor the city has said which Worcester neighborhoods fall inside the 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) circle Amazon showed the Westborough Planning Board on September 15. The council adopted Rosen’s October 6 order asking whether the city has any authority to restrict or control the drones, and This Week in Worcester said the city had not released that report as of October 19. The only drone items on the October 20 agenda were Rosen’s two new orders.
Amazon’s Westborough Hub Faces a State Freeze Request on Top of Local and Federal Fights
The Zoning Board of Appeals hears the residents’ appeal November 2, and the Planning Board resumes Amazon’s site-plan hearing November 10. Four members of Congress want written replies from Amazon and the FAA by October 29 on a site-specific environmental review, and Massachusetts is among 15 states suing the FAA.
Amazon told State House News Service it knows an appeal of the town’s zoning reading has been filed and is working through the process with local officials and the surrounding communities.
Castle Rock, Colorado, is the clearest adopted freeze DroneXL has covered: its council stopped taking drone hub applications on July 21 for six months, and neighboring Parker did the same for nine. Those were towns acting on their own land-use power. The Massachusetts letter asks the governor to do the same thing statewide with a certificate only the state issues. The Drone Delivery Tracker lists the Westborough hub as in review, and DroneXL’s guide for residents covers what a town can still do once a hub is proposed. Residents can call Amazon at 1-888-280-4331 and say it is about drone delivery, or open the customer-service chat and pick “Something Else,” then “Amazon Drone Delivery.”
DroneXL’s Take
I think the legislators found the lever that works. The other fronts argue zoning with Amazon, ask the FAA for more paperwork or ask a court to undo the FAA’s finding, and the FAA’s own fact sheet recognizes the states’ interest in where aircraft operate on the ground. By my reading, a freeze on the landing-area certificate does what no town bylaw can do without first getting through the attorney general.
The letter’s closing line already argues that a review before any application treats every operator equally. A freeze aimed at one company’s pending paperwork still invites an equal-treatment fight, and my read is that a task force with a stated end date survives that fight and an open-ended moratorium does not. Healey can create the first without a vote, and her office’s first answer committed her to neither. Westborough’s Zoning Board of Appeals sits November 2 and its Planning Board November 10, so a review that starts after those dates starts after the town has ruled.
Amazon could defuse this by changing the aircraft. I’d expect a different letter from these 16 for a tethered drop from a Zipline P2 carrying medication than for an MK30 with an 83.2-pound (37.8-kilogram) maximum takeoff weight, no parachute and packages of up to five pounds bound for all or parts of 15 cities and towns whose legislators say they were opted in without being asked.
Update, October 22, 2026, 1:25 p.m. ET: MassDOT’s Aeronautics Division told Amazon in a letter dated October 22 that it cannot open a drone takeoff and landing area anywhere in Massachusetts without a certificate of approval under M.G.L. c. 90, § 39B, that the division has received no request for review from Amazon, and that Amazon should expect at least one public hearing. DroneXL’s report on the MassDOT letter has the details.
Sources: Letter to Governor Healey, Lieutenant Governor Driscoll and Attorney General Campbell, October 19, 2026 (PDF), Office of Senator Michael Moore, State House News Service via The Boston Globe, Boston.com, Worcester Guardian, Worcester City Council agenda, October 20, 2026 (PDF), Worcester Home Rule Charter (PDF), This Week in Worcester, FAA, State and Local Regulation of Unmanned Aircraft Systems Fact Sheet, July 2023 (PDF), 702 CMR 5.00, M.G.L. c. 90, § 39B.
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
