Around our town they are having a rash of plumbing pipe, street hook ups, stolen. Our city has a lot of the old stuff, mostly copper. They also are taking bridge railings, copper wire and AC units. At the scarp yards, they have setup remote sheriff stations with cameras to film everyone going into a scrap yard, Yes, it is costing the county a pretty penny, from manhole covers to workers who have to sit around while substitute materials are located.
Just doing the jobs Americans won't do.
I own a tool and die business, last weekend we lost about 4K lbs of steel stored in our yard, came to about $9K to replace it.
I would LOVE to catch the SOB who took that stuff, he would remember what he did every single morning when he tried to get out of bed without knee pain...