So many Los Angeles streets are dark because of the “rampant” theft of the copper wire for the street lights that the city has resorted to installing solar street lights in the hopes of deterring thieves.
On Wednesday, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass announced the installation of hundreds of new solar lights “to solve longstanding city challenges like rampant copper wire theft.”
“Solar lighting disrupts the cycle of vandalism and robbery, providing a resilient and sustainable solution to dark streets caused by copper wire theft,” according to the mayor’s announcement, which notes that the solar lights don’t contain copper.
But, skeptics fear that thieves will simply turn to stealing the valuable solar lights, because the replacement initiative doesn’t address the root cause of the problem: crime.
Last year, Mayor Bass unveiled the first phase of this initiative in the San Fernando Valley with the installation of more than 100 solar-powered lights to keep a residential neighborhood and elementary school safe and well-lit.
Los Angeles isn’t the only place in California where rampant street light copper theft is leaving citizens in the dark, however. In San Jose, the problem is so severe that the city has “launched an interactive map to show all the places where streetlights are dark due to stolen wire,” NBC Bay Area reports.
What’s more, California’s copper-hungry thieves aren’t limiting themselves to vandalizing street lights. They’re also destroying fire hydrants to get and resell the brass (a copper-zinc alloy) they contain.
Hundreds of L.A. fire hydrants have been stolen from the ground over the past two years, as thieves either unscrew the bolts holding the hydrants in place – or simply ram the hydrants with their vehicles.
Catalytic converters and bronze (a copper-tin alloy) statues are also being targeted.
Even so, California ranks only fourth among the nation’s top states suffering from copper theft, behind Ohio (#1), Texas (#2), and Georgia (#3). North Carolina rounds out the top five states with the most copper theft.