A Japanese city has received an unusual donation of gold bars from an anonymous person for the maintenance of its old water system.
Osaka’s Municipal Waterworks Bureau received gold bars weighing 21kg in total and worth 566m yen, or £2.7m, from a donor who wished to remain anonymous, the city government announced on Thursday.
The donation was made last November by a person who had already given £2,451 in cash a month earlier for the municipal waterworks, mayor Hideyuki Yokoyama told reporters.
Osaka, home to almost three million people, is grappling with ageing water and sewage systems, a concern that affects many other cities in Japan as well.
Osaka, the third-largest city in the country, recorded about 90 cases of water pipe leaks under its roads in the 2024 fiscal year, according to local officials. The work to replace the ageing pipes was stalled after the projected costs overshot the original budget, local media reported.
More than 20 per cent of water pipes across Japan have exceeded their service life of 40 years, the Japan Times reported last September, adding that many municipalities were struggling to deal with the issue due to a lack of funds.
Of Japan’s roughly 740,000km of water pipelines, about 176,000km have outlived their designated service life and the share of pipes in use for over four decades has been projected to climb to nearly 70 per cent by fiscal 2042, according to the newspaper.
“Tackling ageing water pipes requires a huge investment. So I have nothing but appreciation,” Mr Yokoyama said. “It’s an absolutely staggering amount. I was shocked.”
The donor said they decided to offer help after seeing a flood of news reports about the country’s broken water pipes.
The donated gold bars would cover the cost of replacing about 2km of a typical water pipe, local officials said.
