The 2003 power outage that darkened much of the Eastern U.S. and parts of Canada was attributed to a right-of-way incident -- a tree and a power line – which caused a cascade effect. Millions of consumers were without electricity. Does the same danger exist today of a massive transmission outage caused by the efforts of copper thieves?

Across the South, East, and Midwest, electric utilities are fighting a losing battle against copper theft. Spurred by scrap metal prices of $3-$4 per pound for copper, thieves are stealing ground wires off poles, hijacking trailers where copper reels are stored, and breaking into substations to dig up grounding grids.

At our 20,000-member rural electric cooperative, copper theft started to become a noticeable problem in June. By August, we were dealing with a full-scale plague. A recent line patrol along a circuit in a very isolated area revealed all the copper ground wires gone from the poles, and spans where the tops of poles had been nearly cut in half by chainsaw-wielding thieves.

We’ve had holes cut in substation fences, storage trailers vandalized, and even our pole yard raided.

Two individuals have been arrested, caught in the act at a substation thanks to a 911-call placed by an alert co-op member. They have been indicted and await trial.

This has been our only success in the battle to control copper theft. It’s a fight we are losing because a 60-employee co-op cannot protect its facilities in a nine-county, 2,600-mile service territory, no matter how much assistance it receives from local law enforcement agencies.

We worry that designs and devices to protect our distribution system have been diminished by loss of grounding. The lives and welfare of employees and the public are at risk. Another growing concern is that copper thieves will knock out a substation and cause severe damage to a transformer. The result would be a major outage of lengthy duration.

What can be done? Conceding that the best solution to copper theft would be for the price of the metal to plummet, must we also be prepared to write off stolen conductor, ground wires, and damaged facilities as a new price of doing business?

We believe the situation is more serious and warrants a different type of response. As long as copper theft is treated as a petty or low-grade crime, the thieves or those contemplating getting into this illegal business will weigh rewards against penalties.

Thieves are already targeting substations and transmission lines. Yet we have seen no legislative efforts on the state or federal levels to elevate this type of crime to a homeland security threat. It is frankly surprising that government entities responsible for protecting critical infrastructure have not acknowledged this form of domestic terrorism based on greed.

The result would be the same, if copper thieves inadvertently set into motion a chain reaction on the power grid, as a terrorist attack. In fact, it is much more likely that a grid “incident” will be caused by emboldened thieves.

We need laws that require scrap metal dealers to document from whom they purchase copper and in what form they receive the metal. Some cities, Huntington, WV, and Montgomery and Mobile, Ala., for example, have enacted such regulations. But, copper theft also needs to be acknowledged as a crime with the potential for causing major disruption in the lives and livelihoods of United States citizens.

It is time to become pro-active about this continuing problem and convince legislators and government officials that copper theft is more than a local crime. This thievery constitutes a grave threat to the reliability of our utility systems and transmission networks.