Cleaning Up the Waterfront with N.A.G.

In the early 1990s, residents of Greenpoint and Williamsburg were fed up with the city neglecting their neighborhoods. A number of grassroots community organizations sprang up in response to various issues, including development, community board planning processes, and excessive litter. One such organization was Neighbors Against Garbage (N.A.G.), founded in 1994 in a local church basement. N.A.G. is pictured here at one of their litter cleanup events. This photo is part of our Greenpoint Environmental History Project, which also includes documents, ephemera, and videos, as well as oral histories recorded by Acacia Thompson, the project's Outreach Archivist and now BPL's new Environmental Justice Coordinator at our Greenpoint Library and Environmental Education Center. Learn more about N.A.G. in this group interview with current and former members.

N.A.G. was preceded by another activist group, G.A.S.P. (Greenpointers Against Smell and Pollution), which was organized in 1986 to protest the odors coming from the Newtown Creek Sewage Treatment Plant but soon expanded to fight other sources of dangerous pollution in the neighborhood. Their efforts resulted in the closing of a large trash incinerator in 1994 and a complete redesign of the sewage treatment plant. Greenpoint residents also organized to advocate for the cleanup of the Newtown Creek oil spill, which is one of the largest ever in U.S. history. Residents brought suit against Exxonmobil with the help of none other than Erin Brockovich, and won their case in 2007.

N.A.G. changed from Neighbors Against Garbage to Neighbors Allied for Good Growth and then merged with Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks & Planning (GWAPP) to form North Brooklyn Neighbors, which is still going strong today. They are joined by other area community organizations such as O.U.T.R.A.G.E. (Organizations United for Trash Reduction and Garbage Equity) in a rich landscape of local activism and community support (not to mention clever acronyms!). You can view the websites of some of these organizations in our web archive.

Interested in seeing more photos from CBH’s collection? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images, or the digital collections portal at Brooklyn Public Library. We look forward to inviting you to CBH in the future to research in our entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections. In the meantime, please visit our resources page, available here, or access the resources of the former Brooklyn Collection here. Our reference staff are still available to help with your research! You can reach us at [email protected].