Does Mass. need drone delivery?

WBUR podcast, Boston. You made it to Friday. I'm Tisiana Dearing in Boston and this is Up Next. Each week we catch you up on the news and then have a conversation that dives into an issue facing Massachusetts, all to help us make sense of this place we call home. Today we're talking about the future of rapid delivery services, drones. Amazon plans to launch a drone delivery service from Westboro, Massachusetts, the town of around 20,000 people in Worcester County, and residents have mixed feelings about it. I'm a big Amazon customer but I just don't want you in the skies, not near me. We talk with a member of the town's planning board about how the discussion with Amazon's been going, but let's start with this week's top stories. Federal immigration agents arrested more than two dozen people this week in New Bedford, and activists are working to get those who've been detained more legal help. This is not the way that federal law enforcement should work. That's New Bedford Mayor John Mitchell. We've had here people picked up, some of whom appear to actually be documented, and we have credible evidence of that, but it's not targeted toward folks who have criminal records. It's all just sort of a an arbitrary sweep of people. An ICE spokesperson tells WBUR it doesn't comment on ongoing operations, but we did talk with Adrian Ventura, who leads the Community Workers Center in New Bedford. He said those arrested include mechanics, fish processing workers, landscapers, construction workers, and roofers. He also said this was the biggest immigration operation in the city in nearly 20 years. Also this week, a big political story in Maine, where the Senate race between Republican incumbent Susan Collins and Democrat Troy Jackson could decide the balance of power in Congress. According to a report out this week from ProPublica, Senator Collins allegedly steered federal contracts and dollars to a campaign donor. His name is Martin Cowe, and he's currently in prison after being convicted for money laundering and other crimes. ProPublica reports federal officers believed they had sufficient evidence from Cowe to launch a bribery investigation into Susan Collins back in late 2024. But when President Trump returned to office, the new administration gutted the FBI team conducting the investigation. Collins denies wrongdoing. Here's how she reacted to the investigation on a Wall Street Journal podcast. It's clearly a partisan hit job, and I've got to say, I do not understand how anyone would take the word of a felon. Troy Jackson, Collins's opponent in the midterms, calls it corruption at the highest order. Let's turn now to gas prices. They're really high. The price has gone up about $1.50 since the U.S. and Israel launched a war with Iran in February. Now Governor Maura Healey wants to do something about it. Healey filed a bill to suspend the state's 24-cent gas tax, but just for two months. I'm doing this because I've watched for weeks as the price of the pump has gone up, and the price of everything has gone up in this country and in Massachusetts because of Donald Trump. Her Republican challenger, Mike Minogue, wants to suspend the gas tax too, but in his case, any time gas costs more than $4 a gallon. Minogue says Healey doesn't go far enough. It's only for two months because she's going to push everything to right after the election and go back to overtaxing our people. Healey's move would cost the state $120 million over those two months, and she needs approval from state lawmakers. House Speaker Ron Mariano already has said he's not a fan, calling suspending the gas tax fiscally irresponsible. Up next, a new era in fast delivery or a nuisance? Amazon wants to start delivering packages by drone out of one Massachusetts town by the end of the year, and we'll talk with a town official who has some questions. Welcome back to Up Next. I'm Tysiana Dearing. Amazon wants to start its drone delivery services in Massachusetts. The company's proposed launching the program from a distribution center in Westboro, and residents have been voicing concerns about noise, safety. Here's a sample from a recent planning board meeting. Just because we can do it doesn't mean we should do it. You know, the technology today is not what it's going to be, heck, two years from now. Is it really worth the risk? Is it really what we want in this town? I'm a big Amazon customer, but I just don't want you in the skies, not near me. Amazon representative Tarek Wafai was also at the meeting. The drone delivery program is up and running in several states, including Texas and Arizona, and he defended its safety record. We're doing a heck of a job with a very strong team out at our manufacturing facility to make sure that even though those fraction of a percentage point of incidents out of the hundreds of thousands of deliveries have occurred, and that's not fun, but it does push us to be better each time. The Amazon drones weigh 80 pounds and can fly more than 70 miles per hour. The company wants to put a launch pad in Westboro, but needs approval from the town's planning board. John Gelsich is vice chair of the board, and he's been vocal at recent hearings. My colleague Lisa Mullen spoke to Gelsich about his concerns. I understand where they're trying to go with it. I'm just a little concerned at the unknowns right now and how it's going to impact Westboro residents and our community as a whole. And you brought up some of those unknowns at a meeting the other night with an Amazon representative. What's foremost among them? I would say noise is the biggest concern. We have gotten information and data from Amazon about the noise that the drones will generate, but without seeing them in person, without really experiencing that, we don't know exactly what we'd be getting into. And what else? The privacy issues related to the onboard cameras. We've gotten assurances from Amazon that all that data is held internally, but that concern remains for a lot of people. So what does Amazon need from the planning board? Why is this even coming before the board that you're on? So Amazon has an existing fulfillment center in Westboro, so they've already received site plan approval for that facility. And the buildings, parking, landscaping, infrastructure that's located on that site, they're proposing to change that to allow for these launch pads. And so because they're changing how the site is designed, they need to get a site plan approval from the planning board. I see. So the drones themselves are not really the issue as far as what they need your permission for. That is correct. The planning board doesn't have the jurisdiction to allow drones or not allow drones. Who does have that jurisdiction? As far as we know, it's the FAA. Right. There have been concerns, I know in Texas people might have seen videos of a drone making a delivery that falls into a swimming pool instead of its intended target, or knocks into an apartment building. These things are quite scary. And Amazon, at a recent planning board meeting, said that it has developed its own detection system so drones can avoid accidents like these. Let's listen. We have developed the system so that it flies automatically along a charted path with the ability to make adjustments as necessary. If it sees an unregistered aircraft in the sky, it is going to make a maneuver and avoid that collision. That's Tarek Wafai, manager of economic development policy for Amazon. He also says that onboard cameras will help divert if, for example, a child runs into a landing area. What's your response to that? You know, I understand that there's technology that can address those concerns, but they still remain because there's always things coming up that maybe that technology might not recognize or address. So it's the safety of residents and the people of the community is always a concern, especially with autonomous flying vehicles potentially all over the sky. And Amazon is saying that it wants to scale this over a period of time. It will not necessarily have to get the same kind of approval next time around that it is this time. Yeah, there's no requirement for them in the future to come back and say, hey, we're using a different drone. The sound levels might be different. Or a bigger drone. Or a bigger drone. If they decide to scale up, unless they want to change the size of the landing pad, there's really nothing that requires them to come back before the planning board to review the impacts of those larger drones. And again, for those residents who say, look, I want a fast delivery, whether it be for medicine or salad dressing or a laptop, why can't I just be able to get it the way I want? And that's certainly understandable. People enjoy convenience. My response would be the potential impacts caused by these drone flights may outweigh the benefits of the faster shipping down the road. And at that point, there's really no recourse to address this because it's already been established. That's John Gelsich, vice chair of the Westboro Planning Board, speaking to WBUR's Lisa Mullins about Amazon's planned drone launch from Westboro, Massachusetts. It's going to be a stormy weekend with heavy rains. All the more reason for us to bring you a little joy. Before we go, WBUR's Cognoscenti team asked readers and contributors to share their lists of small joys and share they did. Here's a little sample. My name is Georgette Alfano Rogers. My list of little joys includes absorbing the very first sentence of a new book, smelling lilacs before you even see them. My name is Kyree Thompson, and here's my list. Being Maya's dad and Crystal's husband. That feeling when you run so fast you get tunnel vision. Grabbing a rebound over someone taller than me in pickup basketball, which is pretty much everyone. My name is Ethan Gilsdorf. Here's my list. My daily banana. Talking to strangers. Helping a tourist take a vacation photo. The awareness, usually fleeting, that I am exactly where I want to be and becoming the person I want to become. An excerpt of life's little joys from the team at WBUR's Cognoscenti, our Ideas and Opinions page. You can read the big list of little joys at WBUR.org slash cog. That's C-O-G. That's it for Up Next. Thanks for listening. This podcast was edited by Yasmeen Amer and Amy Gorel with sound design and mix by Marquise Neal. I'm Tsyana Dearing. We'll see you again next week.