Copper thefts leave youth sports scrambling for field time, answers

… The rising price of scrap metal, driven by demand to fuel the world’s emerging economies, has led to a steady increase in thefts across the United States and around the world.

In the past five years, copper prices have risen about 300 percent, from about a dollar a pound at scrap yards in 2005 to more than $4 a pound earlier this year.


“When it was around a dollar a pound, metal theft wasn’t something we dealt with too often. Now, it consumes about 85 to 90 percent of our time,” said Sgt. Walt Reed of the Kern County Sheriff’s Department in California, whose jurisdiction covers 100 square miles of California’s central valley, the heartland of the state’s agricultural production.

Kern County’s vast geography makes it difficult for Reed’s force to patrol tracts of farmland. It’s a magnet for scrap thieves drawn to the metal in irrigation pipes, water pumps and diesel motors.

CNN