Among the vast reclaimed agricultural expanses, close to the riverbeds of the Brenta and Bacchiglione near the mouth, stands the building of the Santa Margherita water-scooping machine, developed on a single floor and topped by a tall chimney. The lifting plant, built at the end of the nineteenth century and still in perfect working order, is an important testimony to the water removal and control works carried out in the areas near the lagoon. Initially equipped with only one steam-driven slap wheel, the water-scooping machine was upgraded in the early decades of the twentieth century: first with two centrifugal pumps with a poor gas engine and then with two more pumps equipped with a diesel engine from the Franco Tosi company. Today the plant is capable of lifting 13,500 liters per second.
On the premises of the old charcoal pile, where fuel was once stored to drive the mighty hydro-vessel engines, a documentation center has been carved out, equipped with a documentary and photographic archive with various historical films on the epic of land reclamation. The museum, which preserves a very detailed scale model of the historic "slap" wheel, is an ideal starting point for discovering the area, to the valuable nearby nature and recreational areas, such as Ca' di Mezzo, or other water-power plants.
