Petitioners in Sidney submitted hundreds of signatures last week to potentially pause the development of a 159,000-square-foot Amazon distribution center near Junction and Trafton roads.

The petition would call for a special town meeting where residents could vote on a 180-day pause on “large-scale industrial facilities” while a to-be-appointed committee establishes guardrails around such developments.

That vote would be scheduled by the Sidney Selectboard as soon as their meeting Monday at 6:30 p.m. — which is to be followed by a planning board meeting on the Amazon project. Even if the Sidney Planning Board approves the project Monday evening, the moratorium, if passed in a town meeting, would apply retroactively to the distribution center.

Town staff in Sidney are currently in the process of validating signatures on the petition.

Sidney resident Tim Stonesifer collected signatures at the Sidney Town Office during voting this past Tuesday, where he said about a quarter of Sidney’s 1,150 primary election voters signed the petition.

“I think that this signature petition process started a bit of a bit of a conversation in the town around what we want the character of our town to look like, and what these development projects should look like — not just this one, but any kind of industrial project or large projects, even subdivisions,” Stonesifer said.

In particular, the moratorium asks the committee for a “study of the impacts of large-scale developments on Sidney’s infrastructure, environment and quality of life” and draft an ordinance to regulate projects like this.

That’s why Stonesifer said he wanted to introduce the petition and moratorium in the first place: to pause and allow the town to address the hole in regulations around large-scale projects. Sidney has never seen a proposal of this scale — even if the majority of the new center’s property is in Waterville — and hasn’t ever had to consider appropriate guardrails.

The petition lists the potential over-burdening of Sidney infrastructure, groundwater pollution, “massive” truck-staging areas, stormwater runoff and the loss of “residential quietude” and “the pattern of forest and field landscapes” that were highlighted in the town’s 2003 comprehensive plan as reasons to pause the process.

Amazon has already secured approval for the 3.6-acre distribution hub on the Waterville side of the town line, where the majority of the development would be located.

The Waterville portion was already zoned for warehouse use, and the planning board there determined the application met all requirements after representatives from local business groups urged approval.

Plans for the hub came as part of Amazon’s effort to establish 210 delivery stations by the end of the year to establish a dedicated rural delivery network. The center would operate 24/7, and increased traffic was listed among the petitioners’ concerns, despite its immediate proximity to Interstate 95.

The proposed distribution center could be Amazon’s third facility in Maine. The company opened a smaller delivery building in Caribou last year, and it filed plans to operate 149,000-square-foot distribution center in Gorham this spring.

The Gorham proposal, of similar size to the one to be proposed in Waterville and Sidney, has attracted protests from community members over traffic, environmental impact and noise.