Latest underwater cable cut less mysterious

There’s been another underwater cable cut — in Maine, not the Middle East — and it looks conspiracy theorists will be unable to blame terrorists or U.S. military preparations for invading Iran.

This time they’ll have to blame the price of copper. (Although vandalism remains an option as the police continue their investigation — the area where this happened has seen 44 reports of copper theft over the past two years.)

From The Times Record of Brunswick, Maine: Phone service was restored to some 300 Verizon customers Tuesday afternoon, about 36 hours after an underwater cable was damaged between Bailey Island and Stover’s Cove in South Harpswell. … “Based upon the information we have so far, I would say that it was intentional, but the intent would be the question — whether to interrupt phone service or to steal the copper wire,” said Cumberland County Detective Sgt. Jim Estabrook.

While the cable in question is mostly buried under the sea floor, a portion is exposed at low tide.

As the price of copper continues to escalate, news headlines lately have been filled with ever more of these stories, including a whopper from Durham, N.C., that saw thieves cart off some 5,000 pounds of copper wiring … directly off the telephone poles.

Personally, I caught a glimpse of the motivation behind this crime wave when a plumber doing work at my house recently asked if I wouldn’t mind letting him dispose of a fist-sized hunk of copper fixture he had yanked from under my sink. While I suspected right off why he wanted the scrap, I asked anyway:

“Hey, at the prices we get for this … every little bit is worth taking.”

At least he asked before taking.

Network World