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Old July 31st, 2007 #1
blueskies
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Default Asia Demand Copper Theft Epidemic

Unusual Culprits Cripple Farms in California

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/us...hp&oref=slogin
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Published: July 31, 2007
BUTTONWILLOW, Calif. — The alfalfa here went unwatered for about 10 days, and $10,000 worth of it withered. About 20 miles to the north, the almond trees were also left thirsty, as were melons, pistachios and tomato crops, for weeks on end.

Monica Almeida/The New York Times
Alan Scroggs near water tanks on the almond farm he oversees.


The New York Times
Half the nation’s fruits and vegetables are grown in California.
The culprits were not the typical ones — heat waves, fires or drought — but thieves, who have been stripping the copper wires out of irrigation systems throughout California. The rampant thefts have left farmers without functioning water pumps for days and weeks at a time, creating financial loss and occasional crop devastation in a region still smarting from a spectacular freeze last winter.

Theft of scrap metal, mostly copper, has vexed many areas of American life and industry for the last 18 months, fueled largely by record-level prices for copper resulting from a building boom in Asia. Common in developing counties, metal theft is now committed in nearly every state, largely by methamphetamine users who hock the metal to buy drugs, the authorities say.

Thieves have stripped the wires out of phone lines, pulled plaques off cemetery plots, raided air-conditioning systems in schools and yanked catalytic converters from cars, all to be resold to scrap metal recyclers.

But perhaps no group has been as been as consistently singled out as California farmers, who provide roughly half of the nation’s fruits and vegetables. Irrigation systems, a treasure trove of copper, tend to be in remote places, out of the eyes of farmers and, until recently, law enforcement.

“This is the No. 1 crime affecting farmers and ranchers right now,” said Bill Yoshimoto, an assistant district attorney in the agriculturally rich Tulare County in the Central Valley.

“Virtually every farmer in the Central Valley has been hit,” Mr. Yoshimoto said. “But some have been hit far beyond the value of the metal. For the farmer to replace the pump is anywhere between $3,000 to $10,000, and then there is downtime, and loss to crops.”

Some sheriff’s departments in agricultural counties have rural crime units that investigate metal crimes almost exclusively these days, setting up sting operations in recycling shops and tagging copper bait with electronic tracking devices.

Metal theft from California farmers rose 400 percent in 2006 over the previous year, according to the Agricultural Crime Technology Information and Operations Network, a regional law enforcement group headed by Mr. Yoshimoto. The numbers this year are equally high. Through the end of June, there were nearly 1,000 incidents of scrap metal theft on farms, causing more than $2 billion in losses, the group’s figures show.

Here in Kern County, there were 213 incidents of copper theft, the greatest number in the state.

“They go out and take a farm pump in the middle of nowhere,” said Sgt. Walt Reed, head of county’s rural crime task force. “And they can pull the copper wire strands from the electrical wire box and get 60 feet of wire, remove the insulation and take it to the scrap yard for $2 to $3 a pound.”

Alan Scroggs, an almond farm manager in Wasco, knows the story only too well. Over the course of three months this spring, his irrigation system was raided five times by copper thieves; his well was hit twice, and the booster system that helps pump the water underground to irrigate the almond trees three times.

Copper thieves cut the wires in the conduit that runs to the power source, tie the wires to the back of a pickup truck and drive away, pulling the wire behind them and generally making off with roughly 75 pounds of scrap metal.

“When the sheriff’s department came out here for the third time,” Mr. Scroggs said, “they said, ‘I can’t believe I am here again.’ ”

Over the last 18 months, copper prices have hovered over $3.50 a pound, hitting $4 at one point, the highest price the metal has reached in recent memory, said Patrick Chidley, a mining and metals analyst at Barnard Jacobs Mellet in Stamford, Conn. By comparison, copper fetched 65 cents a pound in 2001.

“It is really the law of supply and demand,” Mr. Chidley said. “You have a lot of demand in China, where there is a big infrastructure build-out. Every building, every car, every motor, every wind turbine needs copper, and there are not enough mines out there to keep up.”

From Hawaii, where an accused copper thief is about to go on trial for felony theft charges, to Maryland, where a 41-year-old man was electrocuted recently after trying to cut through a high-voltage line in an abandoned discount store, stolen metals have filled a market void. This summer in Oakland, Calif., a memorial to 25 people who were killed nearly 16 years ago in a fire was stripped of stainless steel memorial plaques, and metal scavengers were suspected.

California farmers have faced millions of dollars in losses. A bill sponsored by Assemblyman Tom Berryhill, Republican of Modesto, would have made it harder to steal copper, by making recyclers pay by check — which can be tracked — and photograph the sellers. But that bill failed, so counties are pursuing local ordinances.

Farmers say a statewide law would be more useful, however, as many copper thieves work their way from the north through the Central Valley, often ending their journey in Long Beach, south of Los Angeles, where they sell to recyclers who quickly get the metals to the port.

“We deal with mother nature and farm out in the open,” said Mike Young, who lost the alfalfa crops here. “So it’s not easy. This copper theft is an epidemic.”
 
Old July 31st, 2007 #2
R. James
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What can WNs learn from this story? Well, 1) there's lots of money to be earned by stealing scrap metal. 2) Sabotage of farm equipment costs farmers lots of money and causes "system disruption".

The darkies are already destroying America, this is just one more example of how they weaken and ultimately destoy things wherever they are! But, this is a good thing because we want America is be brought down so that we can start over again with better operating priciples and interests dedicated to white people exclusively!

Vigilante justice and militant resistance are the new face of White Nationalism.
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Old July 31st, 2007 #3
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This has and is an issue of Nation Security, and is a direct result of the NWO and 45 million non Whites that have flooded in the U.S. in the last 19 years.


A 55 year old women told me yesterday well if you don't Watch TV how do you get your News.

Sad to say most NPR PBS cultist's think www.vdare.com is radical never mind VNN, where for most middle class struggling I would guess at this stage VNNF would be akin to putting your car in reverse at 60 MPH for most of brethern's minds, but honestly most working folk I would say don't have time to much of what they want, much less read, and the retired class as a group in fact has shown no concern for the racial perils this ex Nation faces.

We can rule out the majority of White women of being any Help, and surely no more than 10 % of White males see the Plight of Western peoples in Peril.

When the majority of Whites finally get angry, we can only hope they can see who orcastrated this mess, but I won't hold my breath.
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Old July 31st, 2007 #4
Donnachaidh
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If the culprits can spend all of this time stealing this stuff and not getting caught, it would seem to me that the farmer could spend some time lying in wait to shoot them and likewise not get caught. Then again, the kwaps might want to apprehend someone who shoots a valuable mexishit as their demise might damage the kike scrap metal dealers living.
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Old July 31st, 2007 #5
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i don't feel sorry for these farmers at all. they are the main pushers for illegals immigrants and hire them. good we don,t want their pesticide ridden food anyways.
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