Long Island's warehouse boom is costly for communities

I have called Elmont home for more than 30 years. Over those decades, I've seen lots of change in my community, but lately, I've been seeing and reading a lot about new warehouse developments and the toxic truck pollution they're attracting to our neighborhoods.

Warehouses can be good neighbors, but Long Island needs stronger policies and protections in place to make sure these facilities bring more benefits than drawbacks.

Currently more than 500,000 Long Islanders live within half a mile of a warehouse, and there are roughly 565 of them generating an estimated 32,000 diesel truck trips a day, according to a report by the Environmental Defense Fund. In Nassau County, where our communities sit close together, that's not an abstraction. I see the reminders constantly in Elmont: a UPS delivery truck rumbling down a residential street, or a line of diesel rigs idling outside a distribution center. These days, I can pick out delivery trucks by sound alone, since some are quiet and electric, while others still announce themselves with the rattle and roar of combustion engines. UPS' Hempstead facility is near our homes, Garden City and Hofstra University.

Warehouses are often tucked out of sight, in industrial corners we don't drive past. But out of sight doesn't mean out of our lungs. Idling diesel trucks release toxic airborne chemicals linked to asthma, heart and lung disease and premature death. Whether we can see them or not, these facilities are already here, in our backyards and our communities. We have to do everything we can to make sure they also support those communities, and cut down on the harm they cause. While warehouses can provide family-sustaining jobs, they must adopt electric trucks and other clean technology in their operations to truly benefit our communities.

A "wait and see" approach simply isn't good enough for Long Island. Warehouse expansion isn't slowing down: a 150,000-square-foot Amazon warehouse and distribution center is in the works for the former Sunrise Mall site in Massapequa, and a 4.2-million-square-foot behemoth of a project is proposed for Holbrook. This development would be many times bigger than anything Amazon already has on Long Island. Every project adds more diesel trucks to our roads before a single new community protection is in place.

The state has plenty of options on the table to make warehouses cleaner and safer, from funding existing incentive systems for clean trucks to proposed legislation like the Clean Deliveries Act, which would require facilities like these to take practical, incremental steps to reduce tailpipe pollution.

The e-commerce boom that gets packages to our doorsteps in record time isn't going anywhere, and it has brought jobs and growth to Long Island. But there's a cost to that convenience, and right now, our neighborhoods are absorbing it.

We can have both good jobs and clean air. Zero-emission warehouses and electrified delivery fleets can keep delivering the jobs and the packages our neighbors depend on while cutting the pollution our children breathe. New York's Clean Deliveries Act would make that the standard everywhere, for every carrier, not just where one company decides to lead.

When our state legislators get back to work in January, they need to move quickly to put new safeguards in place.

This guest essay reflects the views of Mimi Pierre-Johnson, the founder of Elmont Culture Center.