Scrap metal thievery

This past Saturday I was at a local park with the kids when I saw two rather scruffy men dragging an overburdened wheeled garbage can along between them. The can was full of scrap metal, and as I watched they took turns going into the yards of houses as they made their way down the street. I immediately called the police (I'm always surprised in this era of near-universal cell phone ownership that so few people will make such calls: I don't think it's apathy so much as denial), but they were around the corner by the time a patrol car showed up.

This isn't the first time I've seen scrap-metal scroungers in the neighborhood. The last time, though, they mostly seemed after copper flashing, gutters, and drainpipes, and this crew seemed to have only aluminum. Lo, in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, a cover article on how high metal prices have led to scrap theft worldwide! Lucky for nonsubscribers, it's been reprinted in AZ Central:

In the past few months, Belgium's main railway station has lost nearly all of its 800 aluminum luggage carts. German railway operator Deutsche Bahn says metal thieves recently dismantled and carted off three miles of idle rail track outside Weimar. In Beijing, a European commodities analyst noted, some 25,000 manhole covers have gone missing since the start of last year. They were replaced with concrete plugs. . .

It's a growing problem in the U.S., too, where crooks steal aluminum guardrails from highways and plumbing pipe from construction sites. Even military installations aren't immune. Metal scroungers have stolen about $50,000 in booty from the Concord Naval Weapons Station east of Oakland, Calif., Pentagon officials estimate.

Then there are the bridge dismantlers in Oregon, not to mention an estimated quarter-million beer kegs last year in the UK alone!

Posted by David on March 15, 2006 11:20 AM