Scrap-metal thieves are stealing manhole covers

Kneeling at City Inlet No. 3, at the corner of Tulip and Somerset in Kensington yesterday, Water Department crew chief Fred Feoli was on a mission to deter crime and prevent injuries.

He was bolting a length of thick chain to the underside of a 40-pound iron plate.

The plate fits into the top of a curbside storm drain and was designed to be removed easily for cleaning.

But with prices for scrap metal soaring, the covers have been disappearing at the rate of 10 or 12 a night, said Martin McCall, superintendent of the department's inlet-cleaning unit.

Across the region and the country, thefts of iron storm grates and manhole covers - in this case, the specific term is

inlet cover

- have run to baffling, and troubling, highs.

The heists are one facet of a larger metal-theft epidemic. Driven by the soaring cost of metals, thieves are absconding with copper tubing, plumbing fixtures, railroad tracks, and even air conditioners.

Philadelphia's Water Department has been hit particularly hard because its covers are smaller and lighter than the typical manhole covers set into streets. Peco's, for instance, weigh 150 pounds or more, and they lock into place.

The city has 78,000 stormwater inlets. Since April 2007, which is pretty much when the epidemic started, McCall said, 2,500 covers have been stolen - a rate of about 2,000 a year. Before that, the norm was 100 a year, max.

The thieves have hit hard in Kensington, Nicetown, Tioga, and North and Southwest Philadelphia.

They get about $6 per cover, based on one dealer's estimate.

The small return makes officials think that drug addicts may be responsible for many of the thefts.

The department spends $40 or $50 for replacement covers. Then there's the pay for work crews, which often put in overtime to keep up.

But the biggest worry is the hazard of having holes in the sidewalk. With the inlet cover off, it's a drop of about seven feet to the sewer below.

McCall said that, in two incidents last spring, a 12-year-old girl and a boy on his way to school fell into open holes and were injured. Philadelphia police could not immediately confirm the information.

In one instance, neighbors told McCall the cover had been off for weeks, but no one reported it. So he is urging residents to alert officials to missing covers by calling 215-685-6300.

Most of the covers are secured by two bolts - primarily to keep youths from fiddling with the covers or removing them to chase wayward balls - but the thieves have been unscrewing them.

This requires an allen wrench, and McCall said he's seen guys on the street wearing the wrenches on chains around their necks.

Fueling the thefts is the price of scrap iron, which has nearly doubled in six months. Michael Marley, chief correspondent for an industry online newspaper, said the type of scrap that includes sewer grates was selling for $300 to $330 a ton six months ago. Now, it's up to $500 to $530.

With the weakening of the dollar, U.S. scrap becomes more attractive to other nations. Exports have risen from 8 million tons five years ago to 16 million tons in 2007, Marley said.

And overseas mills that make iron and steel are not selling it in the United States, which creates demand for more scrap here.

Nationwide, the thefts have become such a problem that in May the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries set up an alert system, sending reports from law enforcement officials to its 1,600 members nationwide. Likewise, "reverse alerts" help recyclers who have suspicious materials to search for possible owners.

Although the system has led to arrests, the task is daunting.

If the materials aren't clearly marked, "it's sometimes hard to automatically assume that these are somebody's missing materials," said institute spokesman Bruce Savage. "They're often cut up. They've been torched, compressed."

Francis McConnell, a supervisor in the Water Department, said he had sat in his vehicle in front of several scrap yards and done some unofficial undercover work, and he feels certain some shops are buying the stuff.

But Dave Richman, owner of the Philadelphia scrap dealer S.D. Richman Sons Inc., said no reputable scrap yard would do it. "It just doesn't happen. Nobody's going to put their business at risk for a stolen manhole cover."

Except that the Water Department's covers aren't marked.

Either way, Richman pays only 15 cents a pound for scrap iron. That would amount to just $6 for a 40-pound cover.

"This city has an intense drug problem, and that's what's fueling this," he said.

Water crew chief Feoli was the one who eventually - out of sheer frustration - came up with the idea for the chains.

"We could never get ahead," he said. They would bolt or replace 10 inlets in a day, and the next day 12 more would be stolen.

But one day, a fire hydrant caught his eye. A cable was looped through the caps, keeping them secure.

So now he and coworker John Mock spend their days putting chains on the undersides of inlet covers, then bolting the chains to the innards of the drains.

Then they batter the top bolt with a hammer so a wrench no longer fits into it.

Stealing it would require a lengthy effort with a hacksaw, and witnesses tell the department the thieves just want to grab and run.

His theory is that "you just make it as hard as possible," and so it seems to be working.

The chained covers have remained.

But Feoli knows his victory is tenuous. "As long as there's a market to sell them, there's a market to steal them."