Thursday - December 02, 2010

stealing resources …. copper has value …

Well as usual this wasn’t planned as my first post of the day and btw ... had no plan to boot this early. Came downstairs around 5:20am or thereabouts, see piles of fresh snow everywhere and doubt we’ll get out this morning unless things melt. So then, sitting at puter cos of course I just HAD to boot the damn thing and check mail. Well, as long as I was checking mail I just HAD to see what was happing at BMEWS. Didn’t I?

The picture of me this early morning is a an insomniac with a now cool cup of what once was hot tea, a many years thin hooded sweat shirt of a blue hue. Been washed so many times it’s hard to tell. But PJ bottoms and slippers and no socks sitting at a pc in front of a bay window facing our front yard. Still too dark outside to take a picture but hell, you know what snow looks like so why bother? And it’s pretty damn cold where my feet are.

So I checked the site and found a comment and a link to what isn’t a new story. It’s been happening here and in fact, some thieves have been targeting ancient village churches for the lead in roof.  Not only is the story worth posting (I believe), but see the following comments as well.  I always find what folks have to say about subjects as interesting as the story itself. Often times more so.

So ...

H/T Rick K for the heads up on this one.

DIY metallurgists liberate and scrap America’s vital telephony substrate

Cory Doctorow

Spiraling commodity prices and a plummeting US job market have apparently made digging up copper phone lines and selling them for scrappage an attractive proposition. AT&T is offering $3K for information leading to the arrest of the copper scrappers who freelanced enough copper out of the fertile Atlanta soil to knock 7,000 people offline. It’s part of a wider nationwide pattern of DIY five-finger discount recycling—100 miles of copper vanished from Appalachia, three hits to the same NJ station, and a $75K score also in the Garden State.

The FBI report shows that industry and local officials are taking countermeasures to help address the scrapper problem, but apparently much more needs to be done. For example, while a variety of physical and technological security measures have been taken there are limited resources available to enforce these laws, and a very small percentage of perpetrators are arrested and convicted. Additionally, as copper thefts are typically addressed as misdemeanors, those individuals convicted pay relatively low fines and serve short prison terms.

Atlanta isn’t the only place seeing copper theft problems. In this report, Appalachian Power said more than 100 miles of copper wire has been stolen from the company’s southern West Virginia facilities alone. Replacing stolen wire can cost up to $1 million a year, the utility stated. Other thefts have been reported all across the country in recent days. One location in New Jersey has been hit three times in the last two months seeing some $13,000 worth of copper stolen. A utility in the same state this week reported a $75,000 theft of the metal.

www.boingboing.net

Posted by peiper     on 12/02/2010 at 12:51 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime • USA •  
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