I work with one of these everyday at my job. There is usually an external pump that pumps the water into this, and this is little more than a plastic bubble with sand in it and some mostly plastic plumbing that can move the water through or around the sand. The sand is really really heavy when wet. A medium sized one could easily hold 300 lbs of water and sand.
If your yard willingly pays mixed metal price for it knowing what it is I'd definately scrap it as is, but that said there really isn't much metal in most of them and I wouldn't feel right passing it off as metal.
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