By admin 
Amazon customers around the Grand Strand could one day get packages delivered by a drone.
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The online mega-retailer wants to start running drone deliveries from its existing North Myrtle Beach site on Water Tower Road, but it needs approval from the city’s Planning Commission to establish a drone launch-and-landing pad necessary for the operation.
Although this would be the first area with Amazon drone delivery in South Carolina, the practice isn’t new. The company offers drone service with a 60-minute delivery window in 16 areas around the country.
The commission won’t vote to approve the plan until Oct. 20 at the earliest, but a representative for Amazon went before a workshop Wednesday to explain the company’s request and field resident concerns about noise, safety, wildlife and more.
How do the Amazon drones work?
If Amazon brought the program to Horry County, it would use 5-foot-by-5.5-foot drones weighing up to 83 pounds to carry packages up to 5 pounds, according to Amazon representative Tareq Wafaie. The six-rotor machines have a 7.5-mile radius and cruise between 60 mph and 74 mph.
Within that 7.5-mile radius, there are some no-fly zones where the drones can’t operate because of things like airports, heliports and wildlife preserves.
Because the drones are powered by lithium-ion batteries, they don’t produce exhaust. According to Wafaie, the drones leave Amazon facilities with a full charge and return with 70% to 80% of battery life.
They also have cameras and sensors to navigate delivery routes. Amazon says human monitors can ground the “highly autonomous” drones in case of an emergency, but can’t watch through the drone cameras during flight.
“If there’s nothing, if there’s no issue, and we make the delivery drop and the drone comes back to the station, then nothing is recorded in that file. That is immediately written over with the next flight,” Wafaie said. “I want to be very clear about that. We’re not performing surveillance. I know there’s a lot of talk out there about Flock. Our system is completely different in that we are only using it to navigate, not to get any information.”
How does drone delivery work?
If a customer chooses to opt in to drone delivery, Amazon evaluates whether their address is eligible using GPS and light detection and ranging (LiDAR). Only single-family residences are permitted, so no commercial addresses are eligible.
“You have to tell us, ‘Yes, I’m interested in that program,’ and we would make sure that your yard, your personal property, is safe enough for us to be able to deliver to it, and that means clear of sheds in the delivery zone, trampolines, overhanging wires, transmission lines, all of those things that might prevent us from being able to deliver safely without damaging property or harming anybody in the process.”
Eligible customers can order drone deliveries for $2.99 if they’re Amazon Prime members or $4.99 if they’re not.
The package is then loaded onto the drone, which flies directly up from the Amazon drone pad, arcs over the delivery path and descends straight down, never going more than 400 feet up. The drone never lands at the delivery site, instead dropping the package from 13 feet in the air.
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Because drones don’t land, outside of emergency situations, property owners’ associations cannot regulate or prohibit
What are the noise impacts?
One of the most frequent concerns North Myrtle Beach residents have shared with the city and posted online is noise pollution.
The Hearing Health Foundation classifies noises at or below 70 decibels safe. For context, average room noise is classified between 30 to 50 decibels, average office noise is classified around 70 decibels and the sound of outdoor landscaping equipment from inside a home is classified around 75 decibels.
According to Wafaie, the Amazon drones never go above 68 decibels and are at their loudest during departure from the facility, home delivery and arrival back at the drone pad.
“If you’re in a soccer game and it takes 10 seconds to cross the soccer field, you probably won’t hear it because soccer is not a silent sport. If you’re inside your home, you’re probably not going to hear it at all,” said Wafaie. “If you’re outside and it’s very quiet in your yard, you are going to hear it like an electric toothbrush held at arm’s length. If a truck drives down your street or a delivery van drives down your street, that is louder than the drone at overflight.”
How would Amazon drones impact jobs?
Amazon maintains that implementing drone delivery wouldn’t reduce its jobs in Horry County, and would actually create new opportunities.
The company says the 60-minute delivery service is utilized for “household items” like diapers, batteries and tablets that wouldn’t cut into or eliminate its other deliveries. The model seems designed to compete with grocery delivery services, rather than its current offerings.
“One of the questions we get a lot right out of the gate is, ‘What does this do for jobs? How does this change the delivery game in North Myrtle Beach, for example?’ And these are net new jobs, so it’s an exciting new technological advancement,” said Wafaie. “We bring in new employees to help run this program, and on the flip side, it’s really exciting when we have existing warehouse employees who are interested in elevating their own career experience.”
Who gets to make a decision?
Amazon needs Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval, local landscape approval and local airspace clearance to operate in its drone delivery area, but the company only needs North Myrtle Beach’s approval to create the new drone pad for launching and landing. If the drones didn’t touch down in the city, the company wouldn’t need permission.
“If you’re not in the host community, in this case North Myrtle Beach, there is no say on the local land use piece of this because we’re on the ground at our fulfillment center. The FAA controls all of the airspace,” Wafaie said. “So does that mean you won’t have a say? I wouldn’t couch it as that because we’re going to do community outreach, and that’s going to include all communities in the service area. So we want to take the feedback. But the question is, can we stop drones from flying overhead? That is a matter of the FAA, not me.”
When will a decision be made?
It’s unclear when exactly North Myrtle Beach will approve or deny Amazon’s request. It originally went before the Planning Commission at the Sept. 22 meeting, but an approval motion was withdrawn, and staff recommended postponing the matter to the Oct. 20 meeting.
“At the Oct. 20 meeting, the item will be on the agenda again, and [the commission] could postpone it again,” said North Myrtle Beach Planning Division Assistant Director Suzanne Pritchard. “They could vote to approve, deny, but all of those actions are valid at that meeting.”
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