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Thefts increasingly disrupting many important infrastructure systems
When I recently told a friend of mine who is in the home remodeling and construction business that I was thinking of installing copper gutters to increase the value of my home in preparation to sell it next spring, his response was: “Yeah, and you’ll be awakened some night to the sound of your gutter and downspout being ripped down by copper thieves, too.”
Before my friend had even closed on the new home he recently bought, thieves had ripped out nearly all the copper wiring and had made off with the air conditioning unit and hot water heater.
It’d slipped my mind that copper theft is still a serious problem, even with the price of a pound of copper down to around a buck fifty from the $4 a pound it was selling for not long ago.
Ask anyone who has been in the building construction business and they’ll tell you copper theft has been a growing problem for at least the last half-decade.
But copper thievery is much more than a pricey nuisance to the construction industry. Today, organized copper theft is considered a homeland security problem, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
In September, the Bureau’s Criminal Investigative Division’s Criminal Intelligence Section issued an unclassified Intelligence Assessment, “Copper Thefts Threaten US Critical Infrastructure,” that spells out the chronic problem copper theft poses to national security.
"The public safety impact could be significant," said the FBI analyst who prepared the report.
“Copper thieves are threatening US critical infrastructure by targeting electrical sub-stations, cellular towers, telephone land lines, railroads, water wells, construction sites, and vacant homes for lucrative profits,” the FBI’s intelligence assessment stated. “The theft of copper from these targets disrupts the flow of electricity, telecommunications, transportation, water supply, heating, and security and emergency services and presents a risk to both public safety and national security.”
Copper thefts increasingly are disrupting many important infrastructure systems like transportation, telecommunications, emergency services, airports, hospitals and agricultural systems.
The FBI intelligence analyst interviewed nearly 150 people from local and state law enforcement agencies and officials from a variety of private sector infrastructure companies. According to the analyst, while everyone had something to say about the problem of copper thefts, "nobody had the big picture."
"Until recently, the implications of these crimes fell below the radar of federal law enforcement," the analyst said, "but now, the serious issues surrounding copper theft are known and being addressed."
The intelligence advisory noted that in April, five tornado warning sirens in the Jackson, Mississippi area did not warn residents of an approaching tornado because copper thieves had stripped the sirens of copper wiring, rendering them inoperable.
The month before, in Polk County, Florida, nearly 4,000 residents were left without power after half-a-million in copper wire was stripped from an active transformer at a Tampa Electric Company power facility.
From 2006 to 2007, AT&T reported that thefts of copper bus bars, grounding wires or cable from cell sites in North Texas rose more than 200 percent. Nationwide, AT&T said copper theft had cost the company nearly $6.7 million in 2007.
“Every outage caused by copper theft has left customers and communities isolated and possibly vulnerable in an emergency,” spokesman Dave Pacholczyk said at the time.
From January 2007 through July 2007, an organized copper theft ring busted by the FBI made off with nearly $500,000 worth of copper grounding bars and wiring from more than 130 cell phone tower sites in 17 different jurisdictions in the Eastern District of Virginia and eastern North Carolina.
A few weeks ago, about 3,000 Windstream Communications phone and broadband customers in Washington County, Pennsylvania were left without service for a day after thieves cut lines and fiber optic cables to steal copper wiring.
Earlier in November in Goshen and Montgomery, New York, power was cut off to hundreds after thieves stole copper wire from electric utility poles.
In Rancho San Diego, an area of unincorporated San Diego County, California, electricity recently was knocked out when thieves cut down and made off with copper power lines.
Between October 2007 and March 2008, $90,000 worth of copper was stolen from 11 power substations in northwestern Montana belonging to the Bonneville Power Administration and Flathead Electric Cooperative.
In Greenville, South Carolina in July 2006, a man was electrocuted trying to steal copper from a Duke Energy substation.
More disturbingly, late last year thieves cut out a 300 foot section of copper wire from a Federal Aviation Administration air traffic control tower in Ohio, threatening communications between pilots and air traffic controllers.
Copper theft increased more than 1,000 percent from 2005 to 2006. A study by the Department of Energy found that in 2007, copper theft cost the electric power industry about $1 billion – and is growing. From January 2006 to March 2007, electric utility companies in 42 states reported 270 copper thefts.
The problem isn’t likely to abate anytime soon, especially with some analysts predicting that the price of copper will hover around $3 a pound through 2012.
According to the FBI’s intelligence assessment of the problem, “the global demand for copper, combined with the economic and home foreclosure crisis, is creating numerous opportunities for copper-theft perpetrators to exploit copper-rich targets. Organized copper theft rings may increasingly target vacant or foreclosed homes as they are a lucrative source of unattended copper inventory.”
The FBI stated that “current economic conditions, such as the rising cost of gasoline, food, and consumer goods, the declining housing market, the ease through which copper is exchanged for cash, and the lack of a significant deterrent effect, make it likely that copper thefts will remain a lucrative financial resource for criminals.”
Continuing, the FBI pointed out that “China , India and other developing nations are driving the demand for raw materials such as copper and creating a robust international trade. Copper thieves are receiving cash from recyclers who often fill orders for commercial scrap dealers. Recycled copper flows from these dealers to smelters, mills, foundries, ingot makers, powder plants and other industries to be re-used in the United States or for supplying the international raw materials demand.”
And “as the global supply of copper continues to tighten, the market for illicit copper will likely increase,” the FBI warned.
Maricopa County, Arizona Farm Bureau President Steven Bales, Jr. told a state committee during hearings on the matter that copper theft “has rapidly escalated into an epidemic.”
The Copper Theft Prevention Act of 2008 was introduced in the House just prior to the August congressional recess, but so far no action has been taken on it since it was sent to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
The legislation is aimed at protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure that relies on copper. The bill would “require certain metal recyclers to keep records of their transactions in order to deter individuals and enterprises engaged in theft and interstate fencing of stolen copper.
Meanwhile, the FBI said, “industry officials have taken some countermeasures to address the copper theft problem” which “include the installment of physical and technological security measures, increased collaboration among the various industry sectors, and the development of law enforcement partnerships.”
And in lieu of congressional action, “many states are also taking countermeasures by enacting or enhancing legislation regulating the scrap industry––to include increased recordkeeping and penalties for copper theft and noncompliant scrap dealers.”
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