Former Saba Water Purification Plant

Former Saba Water Purification Plant

The Former Saba Water Purification Plant (福山市旧佐波浄水場, Fukuyama-shi Kyū Saba Jōsuijō) in Sabacho, Fukuyama City, Hiroshima Prefecture, is the site of a waterworks completed in 1925, and three of its structures, the distribution reservoir, the clear water well house and the gate, were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties (structures) on March 29, 2013 (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Note that 佐波 is read Saba, not Sawa.

The Fukuyama City Waterworks and Sewerage Bureau calls the plant the place where the city's modern water supply began. The city's cultural properties map describes it as Fukuyama's first modern purification plant, and the base on which a fast-growing town became a modern city.

A New City and Its Water

Fukuyama already had a water supply of a kind: in the early Edo period, water from the Ashida River was channelled into the castle town. By the Meiji era that system was ageing and unsanitary, and the town's growing population needed something better (Fukuyama City Waterworks and Sewerage Bureau).

A modern system required a national subsidy, and only a city could receive one. Fukuyama became a city on July 1, 1916, with Anno Shin'ichi (阿武信一) as its first mayor. In the bureau's chronology, the Home Minister approved the plan in March 1921, work on the Saba plant began in January 1923, the plant was finished in September 1925, and water began to flow at an opening ceremony that November.

The source was a reservoir built in a valley in Kumano-cho, and water ran by gravity from the plant on Shiroyama hill in Saba into the city. The plan was to serve 50,000 people with up to 6,250 cubic metres a day, at a total cost of about 1.7 million yen (Fukuyama City Waterworks and Sewerage Bureau).

Later expansions drew water from the Ashida River, and supply gradually shifted to newer plants such as Nakatsuhara. The Saba plant was taken out of service in October 1977 and formally closed in April 1989 (Fukuyama City Waterworks and Sewerage Bureau).

How the Three Structures Sit

All three registered structures are on the east side of the plant on top of Shiroyama (Agency for Cultural Affairs). The distribution reservoir, two basins set side by side from east to west, fills the east end, and a memorial plaque in the first mayor's hand is set high on its east face.

West of the reservoir lies the clear water well, with the small brick well house standing at the middle of its east side. The gate opens toward the north end of the plant's east side, its posts striped with alternating courses of brick and stone. Each structure is described on its own page.

Visiting

The former plant is now open to the public as Saba Shiroyama Park. According to the city's cultural properties map, it is open at all times and admission is free.

From the west end of Kashima Bridge on National Route 2, walk about 530 metres up the slope toward the Myoodai housing estate (Fukuyama City cultural properties map). The site is about 2 kilometres west-southwest of JR Fukuyama Station as the crow flies. No official information on parking was found.