Schodack

It's hard for George and Rose Brehm to get excited about the new $100 million warehouse that Amazon is building next to their home off North Hillcrest Road in Schodack.

The East Greenbush school district will receive millions of dollars in new property tax revenue when the warehouse is completed, and Amazon is promising 800 jobs at the one-million-square-foot facility, being built off Route 9.

But that is little consolation for the Brehms, who have lived in their house for 61 years and up until two months ago lived at the end of a quiet dirt and stone cul-de-sac where they could gaze out onto farm fields and woods.

George Brehm had built the ranch-style home himself and had hunted deer in those woods, which were just a short hike away from his back door.

But now, those farm fields and woods are all gone, literally cut and ripped out of the ground by contractors who are doing site work for Amazon's developer, Scannell Properties, to get it ready for construction activities.

The 115-acre parcel is now almost entirely dirt, and the contractors have piled up all of the tree trunks and limbs and brush that used to make up George's hunting grounds into a massive pile next to the Brehm's home. The land is so clear-cut now that Rose points out that she has a clear view of the cars speeding down Interstate 90, which had once been obscured from view.

The worst thing is listening to workers grinding up the trees and brush all day long, they said. And when the wind blows a certain way, the dirt and dust blow onto their property, forcing them indoors with the windows shut.

"It's noisy," Rose Brehm said Wednesday morning, explaining to a reporter how the Amazon project has impacted her daily life. "They've piled all these stumps, and they're right there on our property line, and it's piled up 15 feet. They just decided to put all the stumps here, and I don't know why."

The Brehms' home is one of the closest properties to the Amazon site and sits on the opposite side of the massive property from the Birchwood Estates neighborhood that includes about 50 homes.

The Brehms, who are in their 80s, are members of the so-called Birchwood Association that has sued the town and Scannell Properties to try and stop the project from moving forward until a more comprehensive environmental review of the project can be done. The association wants to ensure that steps are taken so that the warehouse and the hundreds of tractor trailers that will drive in and out of the property each day won't pollute the aquifer that supplies all of the well water to residents.

The lawsuit, which was dismissed earlier this year by a state supreme court judge in Troy, is under appeal.

Rose Brehm is worried about the water supply, although town officials have signed off on the pollution prevention controls that Scannell is planning. The truck terminal for the Amazon warehouse with 95 loading docks and parking spaces for 300 tractor trailers will eventually be located just beyond their property line.

Already, the quiet life that the Brehms have known for decades is gone, and they don't expect it to get any better, even after Scannell installs a massive wall between the site and their yard, which is bordered by a row of pine trees they used to gaze through onto the countryside while sitting on lawn chairs on peaceful summer nights.

"It's kind of hard to sit there when they are doing their work," Rose said. "The noise... it's going on all day."

Rose Brehm said she called over to Town Hall to inquire if Schodack Town Supervisor David Harris would come out to the house so she could show him what is going on. She said Harris never called her back. Harris, who has declined to comment in the past due to the pending litigation, did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Neither Scannell nor Amazon responded to similar requests for comment.

Rose Brehm said the worst thing has been being approached by a real estate agent who asked if the couple wanted to put their home on the market and leave, as others in the Birchwood Estates have done, worried about the potential impact the Amazon warehouse could have on property values and their quality of life.

"My husband built this house," Rose said. "He really doesn't want to leave. It's sad."