Thieves Targeting Washington’s Infrastructure Amid Rising Copper Costs

When times get hard and money is tight, people resort to all sorts of schemes to try and make money and one of them is stealing copper and selling it to recyclers. This is nothing new for Washington State Department of Transportation this has been going on for years. 

To put this all into context back in the year 2000 copper was quoted at $1800 a ton. Now, the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis says copper is priced today at approximately $9000 a ton. 

According to seattletimes.com,
‘Wire thieves struck Seattle’s transportation system again last week, disabling ramp meters that help break up the rush hour armada of commuters heading northbound on Interstate 5 from Interstate 90. The May 25 theft of the highly sought-after copper wires was one of the 30 incidents in the Seattle metro area recorded by Washington State Department of Transportation officials so far in 2025.’ 

This is nothing new, we here at Town Square Media in Wenatchee have encountered the same problems. A few years back, somebody went down to our AM transmitter site for 560 KPQ News and tore up our “ground plane”.  

A ground plane for AM radio is basically 4-inch-wide copper strap buried under the ground running for hundreds of feet. A good ground plane runs these copper radials every 5° all the way around the tower. (That's a lot of copper.) 

The miracle is that the thieves luckily did not touch the tower, or they would be dead right now.  

More recently, electrical service was put in for the renovations for the YMCA, where the old PUD building is. A lot of electrical upgrades are part of that package and sometime. overnight, somebody went down there and busted open the locks On the Transformers boxes and tried to steal copper wire from there. Again, they were lucky. (There's a reason that those boxes have locks on them.) There is dangerous voltage running around inside those boxes. 

These same copper thieves like to go onto construction sites and steal the copper wire out of the buildings before the walls are sealed up with sheetrock. 

Look, I know times are tough, but stealing copper wire from somebody else is not a solution.
I think it's a felony.
Wire thieves cost WA highways $500K this year. They just hit again | The Seattle Times
The WSDOT Blog - Washington State Department of Transportation