Official website: http://nag-brooklyn.org/
Neighbors Allied for Good Growth (formerly Neighbors Against Garbage) developed out of the neighborhood’s desire to recapture its waterfront, reduce local environmental hazards, and advocate for public policies promoting healthy mixed-use communities. They advocate with and for the people who live and work in the North Brooklyn neighborhoods of Greenpoint and Williamsburg. Their approach to these issues is guided by the principle that the entire community is entitled to participate in decision-making and negotiation processes affecting the neighborhood, leadership of local mobilization efforts, and the design of a future vision for the community.
HISTORY
As its original name, Neighbors Against Garbage, attests, NAG was born with a singular mission: to head off the Northside’s destruction by the solid waste industry. NAG was founded in 1994 by a diverse group of North Brooklyn residents who wanted to stop the expansion of an illegally operated waste transfer station, Nekboh Recycling, Inc. — an unregulated garbage facility that posed numerous environmental hazards to nearby homes and businesses, and threatened to consume most of the Northside’s East River waterfront. After they successfully shut down the USA Waste transfer station on the Northside waterfront and achieved their goal of creating a new State Park at the site, NAG went on to pursue a broader mission: recapturing the Northside’s waterfront and encouraging its development in a manner that supports a stable, healthy, mixed-use community. NAG has fought to achieve much-needed waterfront parkland, the preservation of viable industrial and artisanal jobs, the creation of affordable housing, and development strategies that maintain neighborhood character. NAG continues to advocate for a balanced North Brooklyn. This work, done in partnership with other local and citywide community groups, is based on the principles established in the approved Greenpoint and Williamsburg Waterfront 197-a Community Plans, which NAG helped coordinate. Their current projects continue goal of working with the community for environmental justice and sustainable, equitable development.