{"id":4932,"date":"2026-10-06T15:09:41","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T22:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aamnation.com\/?p=4932"},"modified":"2026-10-10T15:37:04","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T22:37:04","slug":"delivery-drones-are-coming-to-denver-but-who-regulates-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aamnation.com\/es\/2026\/10\/06\/delivery-drones-are-coming-to-denver-but-who-regulates-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Delivery Drones Are Coming to Denver. But Who Regulates Them?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Waymos are rolling<\/a>.<\/span> Amazon\u2019s Zoox are testing too<\/span><\/a>. And soon, AI-powered services in Denver probably won\u2019t be limited to the roads \u2014 drone delivery is also on the way.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Story By and Image Credit: Havalin Haskell<\/a><\/span>
\nwww.cpr.org<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Next year, Coloradans could look up and see the autonomous drones delivering Walmart orders to doorsteps. But as drone delivery takes off, cities are busy trying to figure out how much control they have over the technology.<\/p>\n

Walmart announced plans to partner with Wing, a drone operator owned by Google parent company Alphabet, to launch drone delivery in the Denver area in 2027.<\/p>\n

\u201cWalmart\u2019s stores put everyday items close to the communities we serve, and Wing helps bring those items to customers\u2019 homes in minutes,\u201d said Greg Cathey, senior vice president of\u00a0 eCommerce Transformation for Walmart, in a release.<\/p>\n

Wing\u2019s drones can fly up to 60 mph and carry packages weighing up to five pounds. The companies say the drones can deliver thousands of items in under 30 minutes. Walmart has five stores within Denver city limits, but it has not said which locations will offer drone delivery.<\/p>\n

Cities have lots of questions, including how tied their hands are when it comes to oversight of delivery drones. That\u2019s because the Federal Aviation Administration has full regulatory authority over the devices once they leave the ground.<\/p>\n

The Walmart and Wing drone partnership in Denver must follow FAA rules that treat<\/strong><\/a><\/span> them like a digital airline, requiring special commercial carrier certificates to fly automatically. They must also use advanced tracking technology and conduct noise reviews to safely fly miles away into suburban neighborhoods without crashing into other aircraft or disturbing residents.<\/p>\n

But cities still have some authority over what happens on the ground. One Colorado city, Northglenn, is using those powers to try to put its own rules in place before drone delivery arrives.<\/p>\n

Northglenn grapples with what it can regulate<\/strong><\/p>\n

State lawmakers attempted to craft state and local rules on \u201cunmanned aircraft systems\u201d<\/strong><\/a><\/span> which would have given local governments some regulatory guidelines. But that attempt was ultimately unsuccessful after a bill died in the State Senate this year. Northglenn is the first city in the region to try to draft their own commercial regulations through land-use laws.<\/p>\n

Northglenn Mayor Meredith Leighty said Walmart has approached the city council with plans to operate drone delivery to customers from their local store. She said that Walmart hasn’t initiated a drone delivery rollout in Northglenn yet, but since it is likely on the horizon for many cities, the council wanted to get ahead of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s very little that we have control over, but we wanted to make sure that we had some things in place before the first application because we know that technology is changing and it’s changing quickly,\u201d she said. \u201cWe just wanted to get in front of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a city council meeting on September 21, Becky Smith, the city\u2019s planning director, presented a draft ordinance<\/strong><\/a><\/span> that uses the city\u2019s land use powers to define \u201cuse-specific standards\u201d for commercial drone delivery hubs. Those regulations would limit where such hubs can operate, hours they can operate and how much noise they can emit. As far as airspace goes, much of what the drones can do in the air is out of their hands.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe airspace is completely governed by the FAA and so there’s only so many things that we can do,\u201d said Leighty. \u201cSo we can manage things like time of day that they’re operating or noise levels or distance from homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The proposed rules state that any drone launch site needs to be at least 200-feet from homes and schools, as well as to be screened or fenced from public right-of-ways. Flights would also be restricted to operating from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. and noise would not be allowed to exceed 65 decibels at the property line.<\/p>\n

Leighty said the city council is hoping to vote on the proposed regulations by the end of the month.<\/p>\n

Walmart and Wing also approached Castle Rock and Parker. Both towns have passed the state\u2019s first temporary bans<\/strong><\/a><\/span> on drone delivery to buy time to figure out how to navigate the impacts of commercial drones in their communities.<\/p>\n

Leighty explained that Northglenn didn\u2019t want to ban drone delivery outright for fear of taking an economic hit.<\/p>\n

\u201cHypothetically, if Thornton says we are going to allow drone delivery, but Northglenn\u2019s Walmart won\u2019t, then our residents are likely to be spending their tax dollars in Thorton and we want to make sure that we\u2019re competitors for sales tax revenue,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Denver has not released a statement or any similar proposed regulations yet.<\/p>\n

Wing drones are already making deliveries in Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and Orlando. Walmart and Wing want to build a network of more than 270 drone-delivery locations they say could reach more than 40 million Americans next year.<\/p>\n

... notas de SP<\/p>\n

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Waymos are rolling. Amazon\u2019s Zoox are testing too. And soon, AI-powered services in Denver probably…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":165558846,"featured_media":4935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":3941,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1477],"tags":[1607,1505,1395,1567,1483,1392,1588,1584,1594,1531,1530,1615,1566,1617,1590,1580,1633,1616,1595,1586,1601,1579,1603,1605,1604,1602,1577,1507,1444,1574,1438,1394,1614,1551,1402,1506,1589,1585,1597,1578,1608,1592,1582,1591,1581,1596,1587,1478,1612,1610,1593,1500,1611,1609,1600,1397,1583,1613,1573,1598,1599],"class_list":["post-4932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uas-uav-drone-news","tag-aamfirefighting","tag-aam","tag-aam-evtol","tag-aam-first-responder-uamfr","tag-aam-int-business","tag-aam-nation","tag-aamaerospace","tag-aamaircraft","tag-aamairtaxi","tag-aamamt","tag-aamelf","tag-aamfax","tag-aamfr","tag-aamhistoryreport","tag-aamlogistics","tag-aammedical","tag-aamprojectnexus","tag-aamreport","tag-aamskytaxi","tag-aamtechnews","tag-aamtrader","tag-aamuambusiness","tag-aamuamcareeremployment","tag-aamuamemployment","tag-aamuamjobs","tag-aamuamtrader","tag-advancedairmobilitynation","tag-aviation","tag-battery","tag-drone","tag-etechnology","tag-evtol","tag-evtolamt","tag-flyingcar","tag-technology","tag-uam","tag-uamaerospace","tag-uamaircraft","tag-uamairtaxi","tag-uamevtol","tag-uamfirefighting","tag-uamfirstresponder","tag-uamint-business","tag-uamlogistics","tag-uammedical","tag-uamskytaxi","tag-uamtechnews","tag-uas","tag-uasamt","tag-uasdrone","tag-uasfirstresponder","tag-uav","tag-uavamt","tag-uavdrone","tag-uavlogistics","tag-usa-aam","tag-verticalflightsociety","tag-vtolamt","tag-wwaen","tag-wwairtaxi","tag-wwairtaxiapp"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t