The New Milford Plant of the Hackensack Water Company opened on Van Buskirk Island in 1882 and supplied the clean drinking water that helped Bergen County develop and prosper. After the reorganized company signed a 10-year contract in 1881 to supply Hoboken, it bought the 11-acre island, laid miles of pipe, and built a red brick Romanesque Revival pumping station and boiler house designed by chief engineer Charles Benjamin Brush. The system soon delivered 3.8 million gallons of water per day to Hoboken's 30,000 residents, and repeated expansions followed as Bergen County's population grew and service spread into Bergen and parts of Hudson County. Additions in 1886, 1891, and 1898 increased pumping capacity, while a reservoir built in Oradell in 1901 added water supply. On June 25, 1906, the filtration plant formally opened, using George Fuller's rapid sand filters and a 12-million-gallon coagulation basin, with a laboratory to analyze raw and filtered water. Further additions in 1911, 1912, 1915, and 1918 increased output and modernized the works, and in the 1920s George Spalding's idea of using activated carbon in water treatment emerged here; by 1931 the company installed the system permanently, and it became standard in water systems around the world. A final expansion in 1955 raised filtration capacity to 70 million gallons per day. By the early 1960s the company had reached maximum output and opened a newer facility in Haworth in 1964, gradually shifting responsibility there until all treatment and pumping at the New Milford Plant ceased on May 31, 1990. In 1993 the company donated Van Buskirk Island and its 19th- and 20th-century buildings to the County of Bergen. Water moved through the works from the Hackensack River by intake canal to a screened filter, through the pumping station to the coagulation basin, then by gravity to the filtration plant, where sand and powdered activated charcoal produced high-quality drinking water before pumps sent it to customers in Bergen and Hudson County.