New Jersey Guardrails Glamorous for Metal ThievesNew Jersey Guardrails Glamorous for Metal Thieves
By RONALD SMOTHERS
Published: May 6, 2004
EWARK, May 5 - In all the miles of roadway in this state, and all the jokes about them, no one saw this coming.
Unfortunately for state and local officials, no one saw anything going, either, and that makes this a bit of a mystery, as well as a madcap moment in the movie comedy starring the state of New Jersey.
Advertisement
The mystery involves guardrails. Several miles of them. The aluminum rails have been disappearing in the dead of night on such heavily traveled highways as I-80, I-78 and State Routes 46 and 19.
The disappearances, which were first reported on Wednesday in The Record of Hackensack, have been noted from Paterson to Irvington. Aluminum facing has been painstakingly removed and the bolts holding it to posts sawed off, leaving stretches of stumplike posts lining the roads.
Why, say the experts, is understandable. It's a little bit of chaos theory and the so-called butterfly effect meeting Adam Smith's invisible hand, say state transportation officials and scrap metal experts.
They say that the explosive growth of the Chinese economy has made that country the No. 1 importer of scrap metal from the United States, meaning local dealers in scrap aluminum can get double their old rate for the metal and three times what scrap steel commands. "The collection system has kicked into high gear" to cash in and meet the demand, said Christopher Plummer, managing director of Metal Strategies, a consulting firm.
"But this is happening all over the world, from Russia to the Ukraine to Australia, and especially in poorer third-world countries," said Mr. Plummer. "When it gets to the point of outright theft, then you can imagine the profits to be made."
But the thieves' profits are the State of New Jersey's loss, and raise concerns about serious accidents or even deaths. The state transportation commissioner, Jack Lettiere, said yesterday that his agency had begun replacing some of the stolen railings with steel railings, which are not quite as precious in the scrap metal market. So far, some 16,800 linear feet of railing have been bought and the department is still calculating how much more it will need.
Maintenance crews have been asked to fill out forms, which are now filed daily, detailing any missing railings or other vandalism they spot along their routes. In addition, said Mr. Lettiere, his agency will alert county road departments to conduct a similar daily review and report to his agency.
"Generally most agencies at the county level will try to handle these things themselves," the commissioner said. "But we are trying to document it and find patterns and see how widespread it is."
Sgt. Kevin Rehmann, a spokesman for the New Jersey State Police, said the department's investigators were determined to track down the culprits, who have struck mainly in Passaic, Essex and Morris Counties.
"There have been no arrests as yet, but we have been aware of this since last September, and the superintendent of state police has put the northern New Jersey commander in charge of the investigation," he said.
The problem has not been as acute on state parkways and the New Jersey Turnpike, said Joseph Orlando, a spokesman for the agency that operates the toll roads. They are closed roadways, he noted, adding, "You would clearly raise some eyebrows trying to bring a flatbed truck loaded with railings through a toll plaza."
Mr. Plummer of Metal Strategies said that aluminum was selling for about 80 cents a pound, more than three times the 15 cents to 25 cents a pound that the bellwether scrap steel was bringing. And even those prices, he said, are more than twice the average price some 10 years ago.
Still, some in the industry like Robin Wiener, president of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, which represents scrap dealers and importers, said they were not aware of any particular problem with theft and black market scrap in the United States. Ms. Wiener said she had heard of thieves' dismantling an entire bridge in Ukraine last year and selling it for scrap.
"But I am not aware of anything like that in the U.S., and we certainly don't condone it," she said.