Complaints about blasting works at the construction site of an Amazon air cargo hub at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport (CVG) were reported in February 2020. Don Jones, president of a heating business, living less than a mile away from the site, said the foundations of his business premises were crumbling due to the blasting, which had been occurring every day since mid-2019.[1] More than a dozen homeowners living near the Amazon air cargo hub site said that construction works by Trumbull Corporation had caused ‘irreversible damage’ to their basements, roofs, drywall, flooring and stairs. Resident Kelly Brock said, “You can feel the entire house shake” and that blasting was affecting a larger area than acknowledged. Another resident, Lauri Mayleben, said residents were never notified that the blasting would occur. She requested blasting records from Trumbull but did not receive the information.

Fiscal Court Judge Gary Moore stated that the Boone County government has no control over the project and was also not informed about the blasting. He said calls about the blasting had also been received from production and commercial businesses. John Mura, Executive Director of Kentucky Department of Natural Resources, said he was aware of residents’ complaints and explained that seismograph readings from November and December 2019 were within regulatory limits.[2]

Class action lawsuit

Trees were cleared along Limaburg Creek road for the project. On 27th May 2020 two residents, Andrew Vance and Greg Dringenburg, filed a complaint in Boone County Court against construction firm Whiting-Turner, seeking to allow residents living within one mile of the construction project to join a class action lawsuit against the contractors building the Amazon Air Hub. The complaint alleged that dust had not been properly controlled at the site and that blasting had created excessive shock waves. Representing the plaintiffs, attorney Philip Taliaferro said, “This lawsuit, it is really the last resort for the residents there, because they’ve complained multiple times to the contractors and elected officials and state…But the blasting and dust and dirt have continued.” He said parents had complained of blasting making their children stressed and that the people taking the legal action were asking for punitive damages.[3]

Taliaferro, who had represented residents affected by CVG for over 50 years, since the airport acquired property, said it was the biggest case he had ever taken on “You have this much dust, this much dirt, this much noise. Breaking parts of your house. Upsetting everyone. I’ve never had or seen anything like this before.” He said that the suit states that those working on the Amazon air hub project have “been well aware of these conditions for many months”. Release of state documents revealed a history of citations and inspections of companies working at the site. Homeowner Richard Ison said affected residents had exhausted all other options: “You call the city officials. They say they’ll try to help. They contact Amazon and Kokosing (Construction). Nobody can seem to get anything done.”[4]

The class action complaint claims that contractors Whiting-Turner and Kokosing showed reckless disregard for people, children and animals. It states that earthmoving ‘creates an extraordinary amount of dust if not properly controlled, especially in dry weather’ and that ‘blasting creates excessive shock waves which if not properly controlled and minimized, cause significant vibrations at properties surrounding the Amazon project’. It also states that failure to properly monitor and control the activities of contractors at the Amazon project had subjected the plaintiffs to ‘excessive dust, excessive blasting noise, and heavy equipment noise for more than one year, and the nuisance conditions continue unabated’.[5]

Construction worker killed

On 2nd February 2020 an ironworker working at the Amazon air hub project was killed in a workplace accident. The 46-year old man, Loren Shoemake, died from blunt force trauma. He was an employee of subcontractor Columbus Steel Erectors. An airport spokesperson said CVG first responders were dispatched to the scene at 12.44 pm after receiving a call about a workplace injury. Neither the airport nor the general contractor, Whiting-Turner Kokosing JV, provided additional details of the injury but the latter said a full investigation was underway and that OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) investigators were on site.[6] Dave Baker of trade union Ironworkers Local 44 said Shoemake was the steward on the job installing steel at the air hub site and was doing “a damn good job”. He said the workplace accident was the first to result in a fatality for over 15 years. Baker’s team at the trade union created a commemorative badge honouring Loren Shoemake, to be handed out at a ceremony the following day commemorating his life. Loren Shoemake was survived by his fiancée and daughter.[7]

In January 2017 Amazon signed a long-term lease with CVG to develop an air cargo hub. The lease involved airport land that Amazon had rented for at least 50 years. In exchange Amazon received $40 million in state and local tax incentives for the project and an additional $5 million from the airport. In January 2018 Amazon acquired a further 85 hectares of land for the air cargo hub.[8] Site preparation activity and ground-breaking for Phase 1, on land immediately south of the airport, began in spring 2019. The Amazon Air Hub project is supported by the State of Kentucky and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The project investment is $1.5 billion. The ‘South development’ area covers approximately 263 hectares of land and is scheduled for completion in 2021. Project plans include 74,000 square meters of sort facility and auxiliary buildings and 24 aircraft parking positions enabling Amazon to operate up to 32 aircraft out of CVG with a total of 64 daily flights. Full build out of the South development increases the sort facility and auxiliary building area to 240,000 square meters and the number of aircraft parking positions to 100 and is scheduled for completion in 2026. A 192 hectare land parcel is earmarked for a ‘North development option’.[9] According to a Bloomberg Business News article Amazon’s new hub at CVG, able to accommodate as many as 200 flights per day, ‘appears to be the linchpin to Amazon’s efforts to develop a comprehensive array of domestic delivery services’, providing a central hub enabling the firm to compete with ‘entrenched players’, i.e. UPS and FedEx.[10] Facilities for sorting and transshipping to distant cities will enable CVG to become Amazon Air’s ‘superhub’. The State of Kentucky is building a new interchange on the Interstate-275 (I-275) highway to support the Amazon Air hub at CVG.[11]