Thieves target farms to steal copper

A skyrocketing market value for copper has brought a big increase in such thefts.

STURGIS, Mich. (AP) — Lifelong farmer Dave Sturgis made an unsettling discovery last spring while going out to water one of his fields.

Copper thieves had risked electrocution to strip away hundreds of feet of electrical wiring from his irrigation system.

Thefts of copper wiring from farms have reached epidemic proportions in some areas of the country during the past few years, as the market value of copper skyrocketed from about 75 cents per pound in 2004 to more than $3 today. Construction sites and utility companies also have been targeted for their wiring, which thieves sell for its scrap value.

Farms are particularly vulnerable to such thefts that happen during dry spells, when crops can be damaged or destroyed when there is no way to water them.

Lawmakers in at least 27 states have passed or recently introduced bills aimed at making it harder for copper thieves to unload their ill-gotten gains and imposing stiffer penalties on those who get caught, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“The best thing that we can do is make it tougher for them to sell it. That’s the way I feel and so do many others,” says Sturgis. His St. Joseph County farm sits just outside Sturgis, a city of about 20,000 residents near the Indiana border that his family settled in the early 19th century.

He figures that whoever stole the wiring from his irrigation pivot — a wheeled sprinkler that is several hundred yards long and rotates around a center point — probably got no more than $200 from a scrap-metal buyer for it. Meanwhile, the thieves caused about $5,000 worth of damage, which took three weeks to repair.

Looking back, Sturgis says he’s fortunate that the pivot wasn’t knocked out of service during last summer’s drought.

“If we’re down for more than two days during the summer, we’ve got major crop loss,” he says.

A major crop loss is exactly what longtime Arizona citrus grower DeWayne Justice experienced after thieves last January stole some wiring leading from electrical transformers to a pump in his furrow irrigation system.

Unable to provide water that could have offered some warmth to his lemon trees during a freeze, the Waddell, Ariz., producer lost his lemon crop, which he estimated to be a $25,000 to $40,000 loss. It cost $15,000 to repair the pump.

“I just try to be a lot more vigilant and be more careful to check them,” Justice says of his pumps.

Copper thieves have hit farmers in Arizona and California particularly hard. An Arizona law that took effect in September requires sellers to provide identification to scrap-metal buyers when selling them more than $25 worth of metal. Buyers must mail checks to sellers instead of paying on the spot.

More needs to be done to curb the theft of electrical wiring from Arizona farmers, says Julie Murphree, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Farm Bureau Federation. That means cracking down on drug addicts, who generally are believed to be behind much of the larceny.

“We still feel that there is much that’s needed to try to push this back, including working in the communities to try to stop the drug abuse,” says Murphree. “If you can stop it in the beginning, then maybe you don’t have a young kid out there that happens to have an addiction risk his life for a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of copper.”

California lawmakers this year couldn’t agree on a bill that would have, among other things, required a scrap-metal buyer to wait 10 days to pay a seller, by check, after a sale.

Another bill aimed at curbing copper theft from farms is likely to be drafted in the California State Assembly next year, says Danielle Rau, director of rural crime prevention for the California Farm Bureau Federation.

“We’ll go back to the drawing board in January,” she says, “but one thing that I can say is that our legislators are well aware of the issue and many of them have expressed interest in taking this on, and really are committed to finding a solution.”

Michigan state Rep. Cameron Brown, R-Sturgis, introduced legislation last month that is similar to Arizona’s new law. The bill is in committee, where it may soon get a hearing, says Kendra Butters, Brown’s legislative director.

The bill would amend an existing Michigan law to require that scrap-metal sellers produce a photo ID to junk and secondhand dealers. The buyers, in turn, would have to include photocopies of the IDs along with details of all their purchasing activities in weekly reports to local law-enforcement agencies.

“Certainly a photo ID is something you can’t hide from,” Brown says.

Brown also is working on legislation that would make such a theft a more serious offense. Few people convicted of stealing electrical wiring from farms end up in jail under the current system.

St. Joseph County, one of four southern Michigan counties that Brown represents, is the state’s most irrigated county, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by copper thieves.

The day after Brown introduced his bill, a group of farmers, law officers and elected officials met in St. Joseph County to discuss the local rash of wiring thefts.

One farmer recalled how thieves had stolen wiring from his irrigation pivots on six occasions.

Another pointed out that some growers in neighboring Cass County were offering a $3,000 reward for information about wire thefts from their farms.

Brown says farmers are fed up and taking action.

“They’re in these fields where nobody sees them,” he says. “They think they’re taking advantage of the most vulnerable, those that don’t have eyes to see in the middle of the night, but I have to tell you these farmers are fighting back.”