Commentary by Michael Robinson | Uvalde Hesperian
Image by Alex Schuler from Pixabay
02-26-26
Near the end of Tuesday night’s City of Uvalde City Council meeting, Mayor Hector R. Luevano announced that the City has been communicating with Amazon officials on the sale of 12.62 acres of land located in the industrial park near Garner Field for the online retail giant to build a new distribution center.
The news was announced after city officials reconvened into open session from its executive session. As city councilmen proceeded to return to their seats, officials were seen and heard laughing. Perhaps because the news that was about to break was good news.
That said, it may not be the city or the citizens of Uvalde that get the last laugh.
According to a New York Times article, Amazon has said internally, they’ll automate seventy-five percent of ops by twenty twenty-seven, cutting hundreds of thousands of warehouse gigs company-wide.
In a New York Times article published October 25th, 2025, it reads,
“Now, interviews and a cache of internal strategy documents viewed by The New York Times reveal that Amazon executives believe the company is on the cusp of its next big workplace shift: replacing more than half a million jobs with robots.
Amazon’s U.S. work force has more than tripled since 2018 to almost 1.2 million. But Amazon’s automation team expects the company can avoid hiring more than 160,000 people in the United States it would otherwise need by 2027.”
Uvalde might get a boost—entry-level work, maybe seasonal spikes—but it’s not “thousands of jobs” like some big fulfillment centers. More like a pit stop that runs lean.
And dig deeper: warehouses mean truck traffic, diesel fumes, noise. The jobs are often part-time, high turnover, no benefits until you’re full-time. Not glamorous.
How much water will this new Amazon warehouse use? While this facility is not being called a data center, the AI, robots and digital components used at this center will likely be substantial and may draw heavily on Uvalde’s water supply.
What about the environmental impact? Remember the “clean”: solar energy farm located east of Uvalde that burned untold acres of brush emitting plumes of smoke into the air for the people of Uvalde to breathe?
The Uvalde Hesperian has reached out to Amazon’s public relations department via email with several detailed questions about automation and estimated jobs it will likely bring as well as other questions, and did get a general response, but nothing specific. (See previous article for that statement)
Amazon’s tight-lipped, so that’s your first red flag: expect maybe fifty to a hundred roles at best for a small delivery station—loading trucks, sorting, maybe some tech maintenance. But here’s the twist.
These locations are basically last-mile hubs: packages get dropped off, scanned, loaded onto vans. And Amazon’s already rolling out heavy automation—robots like these guys hauling bins, arms picking boxes, AI routing everything so fewer humans touch it.
Similar to a new neighbor moving next door, how will the situation be overall? I don’t think anyone knows at this point.
