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" &amp;quot;They either got it early one morning or at night,&amp;quot; says George Bowie, a farmer and hardware store owner in Colonial Beach, Va. &amp;quot;It was only a little ways from my house.&amp;quot; Bowie stepped outside one morning last summer to find that someone had made off with $15,000 worth of aluminum irrigation pipes that fed 1000 acres of vegetables, soybeans, corn and wheat on his spread along the Potomac River. Bowie&amp;#039;s pretty sure he found it later--cut into 4-ft.-long pieces at a nearby junkyard that bought the lot for $1000.  Such stories have become increasingly common in communities across the country in the past couple of years, feeding both the crime pages of small-town newspapers and an underground market closely tied to world commodity prices. The thefts started with copper, which is bringing about $2.25 a pound at junkyards, but have expanded to include iron, bronze and, as Bowie found out, aluminum. Harlan Hartstein, owner of Wichita Iron &amp;amp;amp; Metals, in Wichita, Kan., says he&amp;#039;s been approached by crooks hawking bronze and brass ornaments from coffins, gravestones and church buildings. &amp;quot;Anything they can get, they&amp;#039;ll get,&amp;quot; he says. Even as scrap-metal prices have fallen slightly, they&amp;#039;re still red-hot enough that the nationwide epidemic of metal theft has worsened early this fall, raising the ire of homeowners, farmers, police and industry associations, such as the Beer Institute--which has seen a spike in keg thefts. Hoping to crimp the crime wave, many states have enacted legislation tightening rules on scrap dealers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. From scrap tracking to restitution charges, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law five bills last week seeking a multifaceted approach to the crackdown in California, as the trend surges across the country: Kentucky and Maryland were responding to recent outbreaks last week, and federal prosecutors said Friday they had indicted 10 apparent metal thefts near Bowie&amp;#039;s store in Virginia. The U.S. Dept. of Energy estimates that losses from copper theft alone are costing the U.S. economy about $1 billion a year in replacement costs and lost productivity. And the agency counts only business losses; it doesn&amp;#039;t take into consideration the blow to individuals when somebody rips the gutters--or, as happened in Indianapolis recently, the aluminum siding--off a house. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s the old supply-and-demand equation: When there&amp;#039;s more of a demand, customers will pay more for the supply,&amp;quot; says Bruce Savage, a spokesman for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, a trade organization based in Washington, D.C.  The price of copper, he notes, has more than quadrupled in the past five years, while the value of other base metals, such as iron, steel and aluminum, has also climbed. That upward trend may continue as fast-growing Asian economies ravenously consume raw materials to build urban infrastructure, from telecom systems to office complexes, as well as electronics and other consumer goods. The crime wave has started to affect local infrastructure in the United States. For instance, last year Seattle police shut down one scrap yard that was buying metal road signs. Honest yard operators report that they&amp;#039;ve been approached by crooks trying to unload manhole covers, sewer grates and brass components from fire hydrants. And the town of Andover, Mass., recently experienced a copper crime wave as coils of copper cable disappeared from a power substation along with the wiring that controls a railroad crossing gate.  Ironically, this expansion of the crime wave may indirectly benefit homeowners as government officials increase their efforts to address the problem. Twenty-six states had enacted legislation tightening rules on scrap dealers as of summer&amp;#039;s end, according to the Conference of State Legislators. Some states require these businesses to make a copy of the seller&amp;#039;s ID, note his license-plate number and in some cases even take fingerprints. The most effective deterrent to such crimes, however, is still old-fashioned vigilance by homeowners. Here&amp;#039;s your three-step plan to keep your gutters, pipes, tubes and siding at home, it all belongs. FROM THE MAGAZINE: 3 Ways to Protect Yourself From Metal Thieves RELATED STORIES * PLUS: Save Money and Reduce Waste by Salvaging Building Materials  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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