The City of Newburgh's Washington Lake water filtration plant, originally constructed in 1922, is the City's sole source of treated drinking water. The plant was antiquated and in a severe state of disrepair, making it very difficult to operate. This provided Nathan L. Jacobson & Associates with challenging design and construction problems in that it was necessary to maintain the plant in operation to insure a continuous supply of water to the City while completely renovating and enlarging the plant. Careful planning of construction operations resulted in an uninterrupted supply of water to the City and a modern new treatment facility with maximum design capacity increased from the original 5 million gallons per day to 8.9 million gallons per day.

The project included rehabilitation of the Washington Lake intake structure, new pre-aeration tanks with provision for addition of powdered activated carbon for taste and odor control, flash mix and flocculation tanks, rehabilitation of the existing settling tanks and addition of two new settling tanks, rehabilitation and conversion of the existing four rapid sand filters to dual media filters and addition of two new filter bays, new automatic filter control system, replacement of piping, valves and appurtenances in the filter pipe gallery, new filter backwash, low lift and high lift pumping facilities and associated valves, piping and appurtenances.

A new chemical building was also constructed housing chemical storage and feeding equipment and disinfection equipment. New instrumentation and control facilities, complete new electrical facilities including new emergency electrical generation equipment, and a new water testing laboratory were also provided. The project also included a complete renovation of the main filter building and the original elevated backwash storage tank.

Upon completion of it's renovation, the plant was renamed to honor a Newburgh resident who pioneered in the flouridation of drinking water.