Cooperative wants help catching copper thieves

Staff Reports

CENTRE — Cherokee Electric Cooperative wants customers to let them know if they see anyone who doesn't look like a Co-op employee climbing power poles, because they're tired of replacing the copper ground wires the imposters are stealing.

“They've devoted their attention to the neutral line,” said CEO/manager Randal Wilkie. “And there are 7,200 volts of power there; that would kill you in a millisecond.”

Wilkie said when the neutral is removed from a power line, lightning protection and the return to the sub-station are both broken, creating a dangerous situation for homeowners.

“We've had a total of about a mile of copper line stolen from the Forney and Woods Bend areas, as recently as a month ago,” he said. “We would like for our members to become aware of this because this causes all kinds of problems.”

Wilkie said the theft of the neutral line is expensive to replace, and creates a danger because the line acts as both the ground and return for voltage running through the lines. In case of a lightning strike, he said, the surge of electricity has nowhere to go except into the nearest home along the power grid.

“They're also stealing the copper ground lines off of individual poles, so that we have no ground there, either,” Wilkie said. “At that point, your home has diminished protection and it also diminishes the protection of the breakers we have in case a line falls, say after a car crashes into a pole. It's terribly dangerous, what they're doing for a few hundred dollars.”

Wilkie said the theft isn't limited to the Co-op's thousands of miles of power lines stretched across the county, either.

“We had a bad break-in back in the summer, here in the compound,” Wilkie said. “The retail value of the pieces of copper wire that were stolen was about $30,000. The value to the folks who stole it was less than $5,000, even if they got a good price.”

Wilkie said the cost to replace all that stolen wire ultimately affects how much Co-op customers pay for electricity. He said he recently authorized additional security measures to be installed after the theft, at a cost of around $14,000.

“When a break-in happens, the insurance company wants you to make sure it doesn't happen again, so we've increased the number of cameras and monitoring that we do, and that costs members more,” he said.

Wilkie said the Co-op has posted a $500 reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible. But he fears whoever is committing the crimes will eventually pay the ultimate price.

“Someone's going to get killed, messing with those lines,” Wilkie said. “The only way we're going to catch them is if someone driving by sees these people and calls us to let us know there's someone who doesn't work for Cherokee Electric climbing the poles. They need to get tag numbers and turn them in, either to us or the authorities.”

Wilkie said it's hard to track the stolen copper after it has been stripped, cut into pieces and melted down for sale, though local police departments and the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department are aware of the thefts and are keeping an eye out for suspicious activity.

Wilkie said the Co-op has stopped storing large quantities of copper on-site since the burglary. He also hopes a new state law that went into effect Sept. 1 will make it harder for copper thieves to sell to scrap metal dealers.

“The dealers are supposed to get a copy of a seller's photo ID for any sale of $100 or more of scrap metal, enter that person's name into a database, and mail a check to the address on the ID,” Wilkie said. “Hopefully, that paper trail will help the situation.”