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"The Hackensack Water Works: Sparkling History, Cloudy Future, By Clifford W. Zink, NJ Heritage Magazine, Spring 2002"

"The Hackensack Water Works: Sparkling History, Cloudy Future, By Clifford W. Zink, NJ Heritage Magazine, Spring 2002"

NEW JERSEY HERITAGE MAGAZINE
Spring 2002, Vol. 1, No. 2
http://www.njheritage.org/

The Hackensack Water Works: Sparkling History, Cloudy Future
BY CLIFFORD W. ZINK

One hundred years ago the Hackensack Water Works was in the forefront of national efforts to deliver clean water to the public. Some of the finest engineers in the country developed innovations at the Hackensack Water Company's New Milford Plant that made it a national model of water works engineering. As Bergen County historian Adrian Leiby wrote in 1969; "Standard texts on water supply engineering now refer to the New Milford Plant, along with Louisville, Kentucky, and Little Falls, New Jersey, as one of the great pioneering plants in the field, one of the plants which laid the groundwork for most of the later filter plants in the nation."

Today the plant is again on the front line, but the campaign this time is about preserving some of New Jersey's finest heritage. Like the Hudson and Manhattan Powerhouse in Jersey City, the Hackensack Water Works is at the center of a struggle between public officials who want to save taxpayer dollars and private groups that want to preserve great symbols of America's technological leadership.
Located in Oradell in Bergen County, the New Milford Plant is nationally significant as the earliest example of the American system of mechanical filtration on a scale large enough to enable the delivery of purified water in many cities of the country, and it is a rare early example of a complete waterworks with both purification and delivery. While many people take clean water for granted today, the plant symbolizes the late 19th and early 20th Century development of municipal water supplies that were essential to the growth of American cities and towns and to the health of their residents.
The plant occupies most of historic Van Buskirk Island at the tidal head of the Hackensack River. The Plant contains a Pumping Station, begun in 1882 and expanded five times over thirty years, and a Filtration Plant, begun in 1903 and expanded twice in fifty years, that the water company operated until 1990. Most of the complex pre-dates World War I and its site, buildings and equipment are remarkably intact. In 2001 the New Milford Plant was listed on the New Jersey and National Register of Historic Places and designated an American Treasure by the Save America's Treasures program of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Since the water company donated the plant to Bergen County in 1993 along with $1 million, it has been the center of a preservation battle that has reached statewide and national levels. On one side is the Bergen County Administration, which after giving up on efforts to develop a public/non-profit partnership to preserve the complex, has developed a plan that calls for demolishing most of it and creating a "walled garden" ruin out of remaining fragments. The rest of the island would be developed as a passive park. County officials argue that they don't want to burden Bergen taxpayers with restoring and maintaining the complex nor expose people to the hazards of visiting a museum in a floodplain. Some environmentalists support the County's plan to get rid of buildings and structures that they believe should never have been built within the river corridor.

On the other side are the Water Works Conservancy, a non-profit in Oradell formed in 1996 by local citizens with a vision to restore the complex as a museum and education center, and the State and National Coalition to Save the Water Works in Trenton, which includes the Advocates for New Jersey History, the New Jersey chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the New Jersey Historical Society, Preservation New Jersey, Save America's Treasures, the Society for Industrial Archeology, and US/ICOMOS ­ the International Committee on Monuments and Sites. Preservationists see the site as a national historic gem that should be preserved by a non-profit within the proposed county park as a museum and education center funded by public and private grants and a capital campaign. According to Robert M. Vogel, Curator Emeritus of Mechanical and Civil Engineering at the Smithsonian Institution, the New Milford Plant has the potential to become a "unique monument to the nation's water works industry."

Origins of New Milford Pumping Station

In 1969 Adrian Leiby chronicled the history of the Hackensack Water Company in a book published by the Bergen County Historical Society. A native of Hackensack, Leiby was an attorney and a director of the water company, as well as an accomplished historian with several works on the history of Dutch New Jersey, including "The Revolutionary War in the Hackensack Valley" and "The Early Dutch and Swedish Settlers of New Jersey." Leiby traced the roots of the company to two prominent Bergen Dutchmen. In 1867 Charles H. Voorhis, a lawyer, landowner, banker, and a prominent Republican who was born at the Voorhis homestead on Spring Valley Road in Paramus, chartered the Cherry Hill Water & Gas Company to supply water to Hackensack. In 1869 Garret Ackerson, a businessman and banker, militia officer, and prominent Democrat who was born in Pascack, chartered the Hackensack Water Company for the same purpose.

With the Civil War and the expansion of railroads, the Bergen landscape began to change from farming to suburban development. Hackensack's mid-century population quadrupled in twenty years to nearly 4,000 residents in 1869, changing from a "complacent country village...to a cosmopolitan suburban town." In November 1869 an editor of the Bergen County Democrat wrote: "Hackensack is rapidly advancing in wealth and population in spite of old fogeyism; we have a superior quality of gas in our streets and we need pure water in our houses as well. We cannot get along with the supply furnished us from our superficial wells and cisterns; what we need is a broad, liberal and gushing supply permeating through our houses, and affording every family enough and to spare for bathing as well as culinary and drinking purposes. A good bath is a luxury which cannot be too highly appreciated, but it can be obtained but in few houses in Hackensack except at the expense of much toil and trouble. Let the...water company build their works and give our people a good supply of water and it will pay from the start."

Little happened until 1873 when Voorhis bought up the Hackensack Water Company stock and merged his company into it. He hired the engineering and construction firm of Bacot & Ward in Jersey City to build the Cherry Hill Reservoir on the John Zabriskie farm across the Hackensack River from New Bridge. The company initiated a gravity-fed water service in October 1874 with a "Water Celebration" that included a parade and the dedication of a fountain donated by Bacot & Ward on the Public Green in Hackensack. In a speech the president of the Hackensack Improvement Commission proclaimed: "the people should feel proud of the water and grateful to the gentlemen who had initiated the enterprise."

After the tough 1870s economy had driven the water company into bankruptcy, the John Stevens Estate, of the Hoboken steamship inventor and Camden & Amboy Railroad promoter, acquired a large stake in it in 1881 and reorganized it to supply water to Hoboken with Robert de Forest as president. A prominent New York philanthropist, Wall Street lawyer, and Central Railroad of New Jersey officer, de Forest ran the company through four decades of rapid expansion. A few weeks after sealing the Hoboken supply contract, the company acquired J. & H. Van Buskirk's grist mill on an eleven acre island in the Hackensack River at New Milford. Known as Van Buskirk Island, the site had been occupied by mills since before the Revolutionary War. It was at the head of navigation and brack- ish water, and a railroad along the river connected it with Hackensack, providing a water line route as well as transportation for construction materials and operating supplies.

To design the new plant de Forest hired Charles Benjamin Brush of Spielmann & Brush, Civil Engineers, of Hoboken as the company's Chief Engineer. Brush was "a college professor, the engineer of three water companies and a street railway company, a consulting engineer of the New York and New Jersey Bridge Company, and...a great pioneer in the field of water engineering." Leiby described the 1882 En-gine House that Brush designed for the company as "a monument to his skill as an architect."
Designers of the Fairmount Water Works in 1818 in Philadelphia and the Louisville Water Company in 1860 in Louisville, Kentucky, had used Neo-Classical design to relate their buildings to the great engineering works of ancient Rome. (See sidebar on page 25). For Hackensack Brush designed a small temple of water supply with the Romanesque detailing that was popular in the late 19th century. The Engine House established the company's commitment to substantial construction, with thick brick walls, large windows and doors capped by arches, and slate roofs trimmed in copper with projecting eaves. Brush installed a three-million-gallon-per-day (MGD) Worthington steam engine and the plant began pumping water to Hackensack and Hoboken in November of 1882. Because the river water was often turbid, or cloudy, particularly after spring rains, Brush built a 110-foot wide basin to allow suspended particles to settle prior to pumping. While pumping and distribution dominated the company's early activities, cleaning the river water would soon become equally important.

To insure a steady supply in Hoboken, the company built the Weehawken Reservoir and Water Tower in 1883. Architect Frederick Clarke Withers modeled the Tower after those of the Middle Ages, and Engineering News described it in 1886 as "the most important structure of its kind in the country". When the reservoir water acquired "a very unpleasant vegetable odor and taste" from a "thick coat of bluish-green algae," Brush installed an aeration system patented by Albert Leeds, a Professor of Chemistry at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken. "We forced air into our pipes in 1884 and up to this time we have had no repetition of trouble," Brush later wrote. "We are now aerating the water in the reservoirs as well as in the pipes. The public sees the air bubbling up in the reservoir. It looks like springs and creates a favorable impression." While a shopping center replaced the reservoir in the 1980s, preservationists successfully fought to save the Tower. Today the Weehawken Tower is a local landmark listed on the National Register and the Town of Weehawken is planning a restoration.
In the 1880s and 1890s Bergen and Hudson counties grew rapidly. Trolley and interurban lines brought more people to the old towns of Hackensack and Hoboken and to new villages like Englewood and Ridgewood. The Borough of Oradell was established in 1895 and Van Buskirk Island became part of it. Dense construction raised the demand for fire hydrants, and the elevated villages on the east side of Bergen required extra pumping. To meet this demand, Brush designed additions to the Engine House in 1886 and 1891 that replicated his original designs and he installed two additional Worthington pumps. To address new turbidity complaints, the company installed floaters and skimmers on the settling basin to help remove some of the foreign matter. In 1898, following Charles Brush's death, the company erected a new Power House designed by his firm and built a two-story addition to the Engine House for two large Allis Chalmers vertical triple expansion (VTE) reciprocating pumps, with capacities of 12 and 18 MGD. The 1898 construction included innovations like steel roof trusses and additional ornamentation like stained glass windows.

The National Quest for Pure Water

Bergen and Hudson residents were far from alone in their concerns about water quality. Problems in Passaic, Essex, and Somerset counties also contributed to New Jersey's early involvement in national purification efforts. In the late 19th century cities and towns all over the country struggled with dirty municipal water. Some cities advised residents to let their yellowish-brown tap water stand for a few minutes before using it, so particles could settle to the bottom. Excessive organic matter also created foul odors in the water. Water reports from different parts of the country stated: "The odor was so bad that it would be almost impossible to take it as far as the mouth to taste it. Horses refused it at the street watering-troughs and dogs fled from it." "Strong, fishy odor and taste, also odor of smartweed. Popular complaint was dead fish in water mains. Very rank." "The odor was so strong that we had to discontinue sprinkling the streets and lawns." "The water is so bad that we have had to shut off the supply from June to December."

The most dangerous conditions were undetectable to the senses. Bacteria from untreated sewage dumped into rivers caused diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid, and gastroenteritis. Residents in downstream cities usually suffered the worst and newspapers chronicled typhoid and yellow fever epidemics. Typhoid was rampant in Lawrence, Massachusetts, eight miles below Lowell. Philadelphia reported 450 typhoid deaths in the first three months of 1899. Polluted water threatened future prosperity, as one observer noted, "no city can grow beyond the possibilities of its water supply, as the water supply limits increase in population."

Some European cities filtered public water, but there were few similar efforts in America prior to the Civil War. In 1866, St. Louis civil engineer J.P. Kirkwood studied the "English" system of slow sand filtration in 19 European cities that filtered water though layers of fine sand and gravel designed "to remove suspended matter ... earthy materials ... fine veget-able fibers ... and minute organisms." The cost of building and maintaining sand filters on a scale large enough to remove the "clayey discoloration" of American river water deterred many cities from acting. With Kirkwood as consulting engineer, Poughkeepsie built the first slow sand filter in the U.S. in 1872. It worked intermittently, but other sand filters in cities like Columbus, Ohio, failed since small clay particles slipped through the sand and left the water yellowish-brown.

In the late 19th Century, several inventors in Europe and America patented "mechanical filters" with revolving de-vices to stir the sand during backwashing. The wood and metal filter tanks took up less space and filtered water up to 40 times faster than slow sand filters, and were often good at removing clay but were less effective in removing bacteria. In 1884 Isaac Smith Hyatt, an associate of the Newark Filtering Company, patented a coagulation filtration process that used a positively-charged chemical agent to attract negatively-charged impurities in water. The resulting coagulation, or curdling, produced a jelly-like substance called flocculent that was easier to filter out than individual particles. In 1885 the filtering company installed the first pressurized Hyatt filters with a "coagulating apparatus" in Somerville. The process soon became know as "rapid sand filtration", "mechanical filtration", or the "American" system of filtration since most of its development occurred here in efforts to clean river water. However, the early mechanical filters were unreliable and expensive to maintain, and Hyatt's coagulation patent impeded their use by requiring licensing fees.

In the 1880s many professional scientists and engineers joined the quest for pure water. The American Water Works Association formed in 1881 and the New England Water Works Association in 1882. In their published proceedings and in those of engineering, chemical, and bacteriological societies, a group of emerging "sanitary engineers" openly shared their efforts to purify water and to treat sewage. Illustrated reports with peer "discussions" aimed at water works superintendents and engineers promoted continuous innovations around the country. In 1903 sanitary engineer George Whipple wrote: "At the present time there is no more promising field for a young graduate engineer than that of superintending the operation of filter plants."

In 1887 the Massachusetts Board of Health established the Lawrence Experiment Station in Lawrence to study the treatment of Merrimack River water which was heavily polluted with sewage. Allen Hazen, a chemist and engineer, supervised the construction of experimental slow sand filters designed to reduce bacteria. George Warren Fuller, an MIT-trained chemist and bacteriologist, tested various sand and gravel configurations and gradually produced a satisfactory reduction of bacteria. When the city opened a slow sand filter based on the results in 1893, the number of typhoid cases plummeted. In 1895 Hazen wrote "the first treatise on the art and science of filtration", but he paid scant attention to mechanical filtration, which remained unproven. The Lawrence experiments, the city filters, and Hazen's treatise "established American confidence in filtration at a time when water borne diseases, endemic and epidemic, was taking a heavy toll; at a time when American cities and water companies were at last willing to pay the cost of efficient purification."

In Albany, which had an excessive typhoid death rate, Hazen supervised the construction of a large slow sand filtration plant, which opened in July 1899. In October, "feeling with some justification that it was in the forefront of progress, the Hackensack Water Company hired Hazen to 'see what results could be accomplished by the different methods of filtration.'"

To see if mechanical filtration could remove clay as well as bacteria, George Fuller began experiments in 1895 on Ohio River water for the Louisville Water Company in Louisville, Kentucky, and soon demonstrated that muddy water could be successfully treated with carefully controlled coagulation. Fuller's Louisville experiments, which he described in a "classic" 1897 report, "brought mechanical filtration to a point where it was able to deal in an efficient and practical manner with many of the most difficult American waters."

In 1898 Fuller confirmed his Louisville findings in experiments he conducted for the Cincinnati Water Commission on Ohio River water, which he described as "almost always unsatisfactory and uninviting, and for about half the time so turbid that it is repulsive when considered for domestic use." In 1899 Fuller reported to the commission: "the experience and data indicate clearly that the American system would be less difficult to operate; would be somewhat cheaper, would give the same satisfactory quality of filtered water; and could be much more readily enlarged for future requirement."

The Little Falls Filtration Plant

With his reputation established, Fuller opened a consulting office in New York in 1899, setting the stage for his involvement with the Hackensack Water Company. In the Fall of 1899 the East Jersey Water Company opened its new Pumping Station in Little Falls, about 12 miles from New Milford, and hired Fuller to plan and supervise the construction of a filtration plant to clean Passaic River water that frequently contained "large amounts of amorphous matter" that gave it a "dirty appearance." Fuller later noted: "It is gratifying to report that the Water Company instructed the writer not to spare expense in making the plant capable of giving thoroughly efficient service." In 1901 East Jersey began building the plant and Fuller formed a partnership with Rudolph Hering, a fellow sanitary engineer prominent in sewage treatment. With offices at 170 Broadway in New York, the firm of Hering and Fuller described itself as "Hydraulic Engineers and Sanitary Experts." East Jersey opened its filtration plant in September 1902 with Fuller overseeing its first year of operation.

Eleven sanitary engineers reviewed Fuller's Little Falls report in April 1903. R.S. Weston wrote: "Certainly, the experience which will undoubtedly be gained from the operation of this plant will establish the system of rapid filtration upon a firm, rational, and scientific basis." George S. Whipple wrote that the Little Falls plant "is the first adequate demonstration of the principles of mechanical filtration applied on a large scale, and its many unique features distinguish it sharply from the conventional type of mechanical filters used heretofore." Two reviewers would later assist Fuller at New Milford. William B. Fuller (no relation) wrote "the completion of this plant stands as a milestone marking distinct progress in the art of mechanical filtration...and from a constructive point of view, in that it has been constructed throughout almost entirely of concrete. This has been done with an idea of making the entire structure as durable and permanent as possible." Noting that he visited the plant frequently during construction and during its early operation, John H. Gregory stated: "The design of mechanical filter plants in the future will, it is to be hoped, be modeled...closely after the Little Falls work."

the New Milford Filtration Plant

While East Jersey was completing its filtration plant, the Hackensack Water Company concluded that it needed a reservoir to increase its water storage and to allow some sedimentation prior to pumping. The company bought farms and woodlots upstream from the Pumping Station and began building the 250 million gallon Oradell Reservoir in December 1901. In holding off on building a filtration plant, the company's officers probably "considered that the recent experiments in the art of sand filtration made it wise to wait and see whether Mr. Hazen's slow sand filters or the new "American" rapid sand filters of George W. Fuller were better." The officers were no doubt awaiting the results of the Little Falls Filtration Plant located just 12 miles away.

In 1902 a major flood and the construction of the Oradell Reservoir stirred up new complaints and newspaper stories about the Hackensack Water Company's colored, fishy, and unsafe water. When Board of Health investigators found chicken yards, pig farms, outhouses, and stagnant ponds along the river, the County medical association declared the company's water as "unfit for drinking purposes,... and recommended that it be boiled before use." While Superintendent French had earlier stated the company's intention to build a filter plant, he released tests by eminent bacteriologists showing that the water was clean, and thereby gained more time to study the two filtration alternatives. When the Little Falls Filtration Plant opened in September 1902, its success convinced the company that mechanical filtration was preferable to acres and acres of slow sand filters, which wouldn't fit on Van Buskirk Island anyway. In November the company hired Hering & Fuller to design its filtration plant, which it started building in 1903.

When Engineering Record featured two articles on "The Mechanical Filters of the Hackensack Water Company" in November 1904, it described Hering and Fuller's improvements as "a considerable departure from previous practice." They designed the settling basin as a separate structure with a capacity of 12 million gallons, nearly seven times larger than the relatively inaccessible basin built within the Little Falls plant. To prepare the treatment solutions, Hering & Fuller designed an innovative Coagulant House with a four-story tower that enabled chemicals to be lifted by a 3,000-pound. Otis elevator to the fourth floor mixing room, from where "the chemicals and solutions move wholly by gravity to the points where they are applied to the water." The Coagulant House included generous space for chemical and biological laboratories, reflecting the growing importance of on-site analysis following the initial operation of Little Falls. Other innovations at New Milford include numerous improvements to the filters, strainers, and collectors, and the extensive use of concrete for durability in the "groined arch construction" of the clear wells and in all of the filter boxes.

The company put the plant in service 1905 and for its dedication in 1906 printed a pamphlet "designed to bring to the attention of our patrons some of the more important features of the system which we have installed for the purpose of purifying our water supply." (See sidebar on page 23). The pamphlet extolled the virtues of filtration "appreciated in every home": "a glass of water becomes the refreshing beverage that it should be; the bath is a luxury available to all; the linen of the weekly washing comes from the tubs spotlessly white." It stated that "one of the foremost benefits derived from filtration is in the removal of germs, or bacteria (that are) a direct menace to health." The company noted that it provides "model laboratories and the services of a competent Chemist" to ensure that the filtration "process is constantly under supervision, with the result that water of the same uniform degree of excellence is delivered at all times."

In a 1915 evaluation of the New Milford Pumping Station, Fuller identified six mechanical filtration plants built in the first decade of the 20th century Little Falls, 1902; New Milford, 1905; Harrisburg, 1905; Toledo, 1906; Cincinnati, 1908; and Columbus, 1908. All the other plants have been demolished except for Cincinnati, where some original portions have survived modernization and remain in use. In Little Falls, the East Jersey Water Company's 1898 Engine House is still in use, albeit with modern equipment, and the 1898 Boiler House survives as well. With its contemporaries gone or altered, the New Milford Filtration Plant is thus the earliest example of American mechanical filtration on a large scale, and as noted above, "one of the great pioneering plants ... which laid the groundwork for most of the later filter plants in the nation."

Continuing Improvements

With demand for water still growing, the company began building the Woodcliff Lake Reservoir five miles north of the Pumping Station for additional water storage and opened it in 1905. While the company doubled the size of the Boiler House in 1906 in preparation for more pumps, Superintendent French de-vised an interim plan to boost pressure in its Hudson County distribution system. The company built the New Durham Pumping Station ten miles southeast of Hackensack in 1909, enabling it to take the outmoded Weehawken Water Tower out of service. In 1911 the company built its largest and final addition to the New Milford Engine House, doubling its floor area and tripling its volume. The design replicated the station's hipped roofs and traditional detailing on the three-story exterior while creating a completely open interior space tall enough to accommodate three enormous VTE pumps. With a capacity of 20 MGD, the No. 7 Allis Chalmers pump today towers over newer pumps which replaced the other two VTEs installed in 1911, each of which had a capacity of 7.5 MGD.

In 1912 the company added eight additional filter beds to the north side of the Filtration Plant, increasing its capacity to 48 MGD. Illustrating rapid advances in steam technology, the company in 1915 replaced the old Worthington pump in the 1886 Engine House with the first centrifugal turbine on the site, the No. 3 Allis Chalmers. While it is only a fraction of the size of No. 7 installed four years earlier, No. 3 has a capacity of 36 MGD, nearly twice as much. When the company built a new round chimney on the northeast corner of the Boiler House in 1918, its primary building campaign came to end.

In the 1920s the company once again played a leading role in water purification improvements. Its chief chemist, George R. Spalding, was an MIT graduate and former employee of the East Jersey Water Company and Lederle Laboratories in Pearl River, which had tested Hackensack's water for years. Spalding conducted experiments in the New Milford laboratories to treat water with activated carbon to remove tastes and odors. While the effectiveness of activated carbon was well known, Spalding developed a successful treatment process that the company began using in 1931 and which became "standard in water systems throughout the world." Spalding's contribution to providing "pure and palatable water" won him the American Water Works Association's George Warren Fuller Award in 1931. The association had honored Fuller by naming its annual award after the "father of sanitary engineering in the United States" for his many contributions to the water works industry.

In the 1930s the company built a machine shop on the east side of the Filtration House, and subdivided the Settling Basin to add mechanical paddles for increasing the rate of coagulation. Between 1929 and 1948 it upgraded pumping equipment with four new steam turbines and replaced the coal boilers with oil-fired boilers. In 1955 it extended the Filtration House with six additional filters. While the brick extension complements the symmetry and hipped roofs of the 1903 Filtration House, it is otherwise modern in design with horizontal aluminum windows. In the late 1950s the company installed its first electric pumps in the 1911 Engine House. In the 1960s it tore down the old Coal House south of New Milford Avenue, which was the original Boiler House built in 1882, and erected a modern engine house with two electric pumps. The company operated the No. 7 and No. 3 steam pumps over seven decades, an exceptionally long period as steam pumps typically lasted about 30 years.

Former employees and people who visited or worked at New Milford recall its operation with awe, and how the staff "immaculately maintained the impressive old plant." Ted Hoffman of Paramus practically grew up in the plant and remembers how master machinists like his father "could fix any of the machines or their parts", and how "their sense of mission and their love of the big steam engines" really impressed him as a child. The men maintained the equipment in spotless condition, even polishing the brass fittings and plates. Miles Kuchar of Montvale and his father did contract work on the site over a period of four decades that included installing new boilers and pumps. He recalls that "Hackensack Water was a triple "A" Company. Once you worked there, you had a job for life." Fred Schelhas of Dumont, who worked there for 34 years and retired as assistant manager, remembers how the staff routinely handled floods: "There was no way that we ever needed to wear any kind of boot inside the plant. Our pumps always took care of any water seepage. It never flooded inside the building all the years I was there."

The New Milford Pumping Station Today

The New Milford Pumping Station survives today as a remarkable and unique example of the historic development of municipal water supply in America with pioneering purification and delivery systems. A walk through the complex provides a rare opportunity to see what a large-scale municipal water works looked like prior to World War I. The importance of early purification engineering is apparent in the design and scale of the Settling Basin and the Filtration House. The complexity and ingenuity of filtration technology is evident in its Operating and Pipe Galleries, Chemical Tanks, Mixing and Machinery Rooms, Filters, and Laboratory.

The magnificence of steam engineering is unmistakable within the Pumping Station. According to stream historian Conrad Milster, head of Pratt Institute's landmark power plant in Brooklyn, "New Milford has a unique, unparalleled collection of machinery which is not only impressive in its own right but traces the technological development of water supply." The scale, complexity, and detailing of the No. 7 Allis Chalmers VTE illustrates the apex of the reciprocating steam engine at a time "when machinery, even though built on a massive scale, was still understandable to the average person." The evolution of steam turbines is illustrated by the No. 3 Allis Chalmers and the smaller pumps of the 1920s and 1940s. As Milster notes, "The station represents all the major steps in the development of pumping machinery - an ideal collection (illustrating) the importance of water supply to the public."

The buildings and structures at New Milford display a splendid integration of engineering and architecture, combining classical design with technological innovations. Period craftsmanship is everywhere, in molded brickwork, carved brownstone trim, terra cotta date medallions, wood windows with stained glass transoms, wide entrance doorways with arched tops, and slate roofs with copper detailing and molded wooden eaves. On the interior elegant structural components illustrate evolutionary advances in construction engineering, from fine geometric carpentry and chamfered timber framing to intricate steel trusses.

Today Van Buskirk Island and the adjacent river corridor look a lot like they did in the early 20th century, with the water works, roads, and open space integrated with native vegetation along the river banks. The corridor includes: the Oradell Reservoir about one-half mile upstream from the Pumping Station; small diversion dams built in the 1880s just north of the station that create a pond with four wooded islands; and an intake reservoir with iron sluice gates on the west side of the island where the historic mill pond was located. The island has two historic bridges ­ the Elm Street Bridge built in 1892 and the Madison Avenue Bridge built in 1902. Despite the recent growth of wild vegetation, the water company's landscaping of lawns, formally cut shrubs, and towering trees is still apparent.

With the exception of some small equipment parts that were removed, the site has remained largely untouched since 1990. In 2000 the County covered most of the windows and doors with plywood, but little other maintenance has taken place and the buildings are slowly deteriorating. The site is fenced but vegetation has grown around several portions of it.

After several years of studying alternative uses for the site, Bergen County, Oradell, and the Water Works Conservancy in 2000 began negotiating a three-party agreement for the County to develop the island as a passive park and to transfer the historic buildings to the Conservancy for restoration as a museum and environmental education center, with Oradell taking over if the Conservancy should fail. The plan included the County's transfer to the Conservancy of a $575,000 preservation grant it had received from the N.J. Historic Trust for stabilizing the historic buildings and about $766,000 remaining from the Hackensack Water Company's $1,000,000 donation grant. In the spring of 2001 the relatively small town of Oradell decided that it could not assume the financial burden of taking over the complex if restoration efforts failed, which seems obvious especially since the water company donated the site to the County and not the town. The County then decided to proceed with its "walled garden" alternative without the Conservancy.

Last December the County presented its plan to the New Jersey Historic Sites Council, which reviews public projects that impact properties listed on the State Register of Historic Places, to demolish most of the complex, saving parts of it for park office and exhibition space, turning the No. 7 Allis Chalmers steam engine into an open air exhibit, and planting gardens within fragments of the old brick walls. Bergen officials argued that taxpayers couldn't afford to preserve the buildings nor risk the liabilities involved in allowing people to visit buildings within a flood plain. While recognizing the financial issues, the Historic Sites Council cited numerous instances of historic buildings being successfully preserved and occupied in floodplains, including New Bridge Landing in Bergen County and Harper's Ferry in West Virginia. In rejecting the County's proposal in February, the Historic Sites Council noted that the "walled garden" plan did not follow the U.S. Department of the Interior's Standards for Historic Properties, which is required by state law, and instructed the County to develop a preservation plan for the site that preserves the historic significance of its buildings and structures.

Under state law, Bradley Campbell, the new commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection, had 120 days following Bergen County's application to the Historic Sites Council to confirm or reject the Historic Sites Council's recommendation. That would have required Campbell to make a decision by March 25th. Instead, Campbell requested that all parties concerned agree to a 90-day extension so that he could meet with both sides in an attempt to foster a more conciliatory approach, as well as give himself time to study the issues involved.

Historic preservationists were encouraged by Campbell's subsequent decision to order preservation of Black Rock, a native Native American site in Sussex County, just before the Vernon Township Committee was going to issue a contract for construction of a soccer field on the site. Historic preservationists viewed Vernon's effort as an attempt to circumvent the normal historic preservation review process and are hopeful that Campbell's decision in the Sussex case is a harbinger of his ruling on preservation of the Hackensack Water Works.

The primary issues of the Hackensack Water Works struggle are the stewardship of public resources ­ financial, environmental, historical ­ public safety, and the ability of the people to safeguard their heritage. The County's concerns about overburdening taxpayers and protecting the public are understandable, and its goal to preserve Van Buskirk Island as a passive park is laudable, as is the goal of environmentalists to conserve the river corridor as a nature preserve. However, the dedication of people from Bergen, the state, and beyond, to save the Hackensack Water Works reflects the desire of people all over the world to celebrate human achievement by preserving great buildings and artifacts.

There are numerous examples in New Jersey and around the country of successful partnerships between government and non-profit groups that leverage public resources with private funds to restore and manage publicly owned historic sites, including Morven, the former governor's mansion in Princeton, and Ellis Island. The successful preservation of historic buildings within passive parks is also common, as in the Fairmount Water Works. As noted above, there are also many examples of successfully managing the risks associated with floodplains and other hazards.
All things considered, the Hackensack Water Works presents a golden opportunity in New Jersey for public officials and private citizens to work closely together to preserve our common heritage so we can better understand and appreciate how the ingenuity and dedication of past generations has contributed to the quality of our lives.
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Clifford Zink is an architectural historian and preservation consultant based in Princeton. He is the author of Spanning the Industrial Age: The History of the John A. Roebling's Sons Company in Trenton, N.J. 1848-1974. This article is based on research for a National Landmark Nomination of the Hackensack Water Works sponsored by the Water Works Conservancy. The article is a precursor to a book on the Hackensack Water Works that is being funded in part by a grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission to the Conservancy. The book, which will include oral histories, will be published later this year.