Copper thieves cost taxpayers millions

Copper thefts from highway lights have cost Kentucky taxpayers $2 million over the last four years.

On Monday, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and Kentucky State Police announced a joint effort to combat the problem. KYTC is offering a reward of up to $2,500paid from KYTC maintenance funds for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for copper wire thefts from highway lights. The agencies also made a public appeal to metal recyclers for assistance in identifying anyone trying to sell the stolen copper.

Metal theft has been a statewide problem for several years with many contractors fighting the issue at construction sites and property owners coming home to find their heating and cooling systems ripped apart by copper thieves who get a few dollars for the wiring found in those systems and do thousands of dollars in damage when they remove the wiring.

From Jan. 1 through Oct. 23, copper thieves have stripped the wires from 37 highway entrance or exit ramp areas, mostly around the Louisville and Lexington areas. None of the highway lights in this area has been targeted, officials said.

We know copper theft is not confined to our interstate lighting systems. Its been a problem in eastern and southeastern Kentucky for telephone lines, power lines (and) homes under construction,KYTC spokesman Chuck Wolfe said. In recent years, weve seen this shifting of attention to our lights out on the interstates.

Theyre almost exclusively at interchanges, although some are more isolated than others. We havent been able to catch anybody in the act. Our investigators think they know how these crimes are carried out. We think somebody in the daytime, when there is no current going through the light, they cut the wires and then they come back at night and strip the wires out.

Most of the wire that has been stripped goes from one light to another through a conduit underground. There are some thefts from the light pole itself, but mainly thieves are pulling the wiring that runs underground.

The costs associated with repairs to these lights varies; at one interchange in Grayson the repair cost was $37,000.

Were confident that what they get for the copper is a fraction of the damage they cause and what it costs taxpayers, Wolfe said. It comes out of my pocket, your pocket and anybody else who buys gas. The gas tax goes into the road fund, and the road fund is what supports the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and all of its activities, including its maintenance work.

Money we have to spend to remediate a crime scene is money that could have been going to other kinds of maintenance work that the public expects us to carry out, ranging from brush clearing on rights of way to snow and ice removal in the wintertime and repairing potholes, tree trimming, weed spraying, brush clearing, he said.

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Copper thieves cost taxpayers millions