Bedford Park and Norwood residents are fighting the possible closure of a local post office, saying it would leave the neighborhood with a lack of access to most mail services.

The so-called Botanical Station on Webster Avenue is one of 17 post offices in the Bronx alone that could be closed as the struggling United States Postal Service looks to cut $20 million from its budget over the next three years.

The roughly 40, mostly older, residents who gathered at a discontinuance hearing Monday night at the Bedford Park Senior Center, said other locations listed by the USPS were too far away or in dangerous neighborhoods. Most residents would have to travel to the station at East 188th Street station, nearly a mile away from the Botanical location. Others said it would be too hard for them to traverse the hilly neighborhood.

State Senator Gustavo Rivera threw his weight behind the community’s effort to save the station.

“This is a station that we cannot afford to close,” he said at the hearing. “There is, unfortunately, a national conversation that attacks the post office as something that is not necessary.”

Members of the USPS at the hearing said plans to close any post offices have not been finalized. But the Bronx is taking the brunt of the post office losses. The 17 at risk in the Bronx is half of a total of 34 in the city.

Connie Chirichello, a spokesperson for the Postal Service, said there was no borough bias when determining which post offices to close.“Our headquarters did an evaluation and determined, not by location, but they looked at other criteria.” she said. “They didn’t look at jurisdiction at all. They looked at numbers.”