Copper Thieves Keep Stripping Streetlight Wires. These 700-Pound Concrete Blocks Should Help
The Drive ·
Rhode Island has developed a low-tech but effective way to combat the scourge of copper theft: Impossibly hefty chunks of concrete. The post Copper Thieves Keep Stripping Streetlight Wires. These 700-Pound Concrete Blocks Should Help appeared first on The Drive .
The Rhode Island Department of Transportation has turned to a somewhat strange but simple solution to combat theft of the copper wires that power streetlamps: Covering their access covers with almost-immovable chunks of concrete.
Call it low-tech, but it appears to be working. RIDOT began placing these blocks on top of manhole covers over the last few months to protect wiring. RIDOT Interim Director Robert Rocchio told NBC 10 WJAR that the state has lost more than $1 million in stolen copper, though he neglected to say over what timeframe.
“[The thefts] started a few years back when copper prices went up significantly,” Rocchio said. “It’s a constant battle—we restore it, they steal the copper, we go back in.”
That’s harder to do now in the Ocean State, though. The concrete blocks in question weigh 700 pounds and require equipment to move. Rocchio said the plan has worked so far, but then, how could it not? RIDOT aims to install 151 of these in total, and 87 have already been done.
The program’s total cost was $75,000. (Not $ 750,000 , thank goodness, as the video segment above claims; WJAR later issued a correction in its written version of the story). On or near roads, the concrete is ground down to lay flat; off the roadway, it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Copper wire theft is indeed a national problem that extends far beyond Rhode Island. From Philadelphia , where stolen wires have left a youth football team to practice in the dark, to California , where AT&T recorded 4,300 thefts of its own wire last year alone. The telecom giant is driving an awareness campaign and offering monetary rewards in multiple states for individuals with information about related investigations.
“What they typically do is they cut the cable down, they’ll pull it to a location, and they start working on stripping it,” Scott Gonzaga, of AT&T’s construction and engineering division, told NPR in June. “Then they burn it to get the sheath off and to get it down to the bare copper,” before selling or recycling the metal.
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The post Copper Thieves Keep Stripping Streetlight Wires. These 700-Pound Concrete Blocks Should Help appeared first on The Drive .