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Who We Are > Past Activities
Working closely with our many friends, local and citywide organizations, and elected officials, NAG has:
Illegal transfer station
NAG's organizing efforts resulted in an
illegally operated commercial garbage transfer station on the Northside
Williamsburg waterfront being closed down in 1998. We then prevented it
from reopening under new corporate ownership. NAG led the negotiations
with city and state officials, used "people power" and the media to
pressure regulators, and retained legal counsel to represent the
community during agency hearings. Our district still handles 40% of the
City's commercial and a portion of its residential waste stream, and the
community continues to work on this issue through a district-wide
coalition.
Waterfront Park
NAG's advocacy for the creation of much-needed
parkland on the North Brooklyn waterfront resulted in New York State's
purchase of a seven-acre portion of the old Brooklyn Eastern District
Terminal (BEDT) site for this purpose on June 13, 2000. NAG's meetings
with state officials, its coordination with open space advocates
throughout the state, and its organizing and advocacy campaign led to
the designation. In late 2003, NAG secured funding to establish Friends
of BEDT Park to coordinate community participation in the park's design
and oversight. The Friends held a contest inviting community members to
design the waterfront along the park. The results will be announced
soon.
In 2005, the City mapped a new 28-acre park adjacent to the State
Park. The City budgeted money to acquire the land from its owners, but
the funding necessary to design and develop the park was dependent upon
New York being chosen to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. As London was
chosen instead, a new funding commitment is needed. Accordingly, NAG
plans to initiate an organizing and advocacy campaign in 2006-7 to
ensure that the City makes good on its promise to our community.
Community Plan
From 1998 until 2002, NAG served as the Northside
coordinator for the development of the Greenpoint and Williamsburg
Waterfront 197-a Community Plans. The award-winning
plans, reflecting ten years of community effort, called for protection
of affordable housing, creation of waterfront open space, and retention
of environmentally sound, job-generating light manufacturing businesses.
They provided a blueprint for the community we wanted: a mixed-use,
mixed-income neighborhood where residents and manufacturers could not
only live together, but benefit each other. The City Council approved
the plans in January, 2002.
Tri-Boro Shelving
In the late 1990s, Tri-Boro Shelving, 286 Whythe Ave. (between Grand St. and N. 1st.) , which had been subject to complaints about toxic emissions, began using a
low-level volatile organic compound (VOC) paint in its spray-painting
process. Unfortunately, the problems and complaints persisted because the the new
process still emitted VOCs, as well as toluene from cleaning the spray
paint equipment and other fumes from gas baking ovens. Negotiations by
NAG's Pollution Prevention Coordinator with the company and State
officials resulted in Tri-Boro's receiving funding for and installing
an electrostatic powder spray paint system which resulted in zero
emissions. In October, 2003, NAG received the NY Governor's Award for
Pollution Prevention for having facilitated a Good Neighbor agreement
between Williamsburg residents and Tri-Boro. NAG is the first community
group ever to win this award, which traditionally goes to large
corporations.
Power Plant
NAG played a leading role in the fight to stop the
permitting of an ill-conceived 1,100 MW power plant, to be developed by TransGas Energy, on the Williamsburg
waterfront. To challenge Transgas, NAG led
the largest protest march in Northside's history. While a decision is
still pending, NAG and the community's efforts were rewarded in April
2004 when the New York State hearing examiners recommended that the plan
not go forward.
Rezoning
NAG provided leadership and resources to the Rezoning Task
Force (RTF) of Brooklyn Community Board 1 during the rezoning process.
Despite the Council's approval of North Brooklyn's award-winning
community plans, the New York City Department of City Planning (DEP)'s
2003 proposal rezoning blatantly disregarded them. When DCP began the
official legal rezoning action, NAG realized that the community had no
resources or knowledge with which to respond to it. We therefore shifted
our focus and, in partnership with the RTF, began to coordinate the
community's response.
In order to make sure that the RTF's recommendations reflected the
entire community, NAG then initiated the creation of the North Brooklyn
Alliance (NBA), a coalition of over forty organizations. The NBA helped
the community gain commitments from the Mayor and City Council to
preserve jobs, ensure public access to the waterfront, allocate more
parks and open space, and create and/or maintain thousands of units of
affordable housing for the residents of North Brooklyn.
Since the rezoning's approval in May, 2005, the NBA has been working
to ensure that those promises are being kept.
Northside Jobs
One of NAG's priorities during the past few years has
been to defend the neighborhood's industrial businesses and jobs from
displacement and, in the wake of the rezoning, to help support those which are displaced.
During the summer of 2006, NAG conducted outreach for the new
Mayor's Office of Industrial and Manufacturing Businesses in the
Greenpoint/Williamsburg Industrial Ombudsman area currently administered
by the East Williamsburg Valley Industrial Development Corp. (EWVIDCO).
We were contracted to collect industrial businesses' contact information
and query them about their space needs, expansion plans, etc. - information which will go into
a new city database of industrial businesses - as well as inform them
about grants and relocation money available for businesses in the
rezoned areas.
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