Scrap metal is hot commodity

This week, Richmond County sheriff's Investigator Kendall Brown stopped two men wheeling an air compressor down Old Savannah Road in Augusta. The week before he found an ATM at a recycling center, and before that, piles of brand new lighting supplies from a school construction project in Aiken County.

A souring economy might have made it harder to get cash from leftover refrigerators and air conditioner coils, but it hasn't stopped those desperate for a few bucks from trying -- both inside and outside the bounds of the law.

Just about anything metal can, and is, sold at the area's four recycling centers.

As the Richmond County sheriff's "copper man," Investigator Brown has seen his share of unusual and sometimes illegal things sold for scrap.

"If a metal theft is reported anywhere (in the area), it'll end up in a scrap yard," said Investigator Brown, who cites brand new chrome Harley Davidson motorcycle handles, lights and air filters as one of the strangest scrapped items he's seen. "It's just a matter of time."

Part of his day is spent patrolling the areas around local scrap yards, especially in the area of Molly Pond Road and Old Savannah Road, to make sure the items haven't been stolen. With the two largest recycling centers sitting almost back to back, the convergence of these two south Augusta roadways has become a major intersection of sorts for metal traders.

All day, men and women push shopping carts filled to the brim with rusted box springs, broken lawn mowers and other pieces of metal to the two centers for cash.

In a way, the traders provide a service, according to Investigator Brown. Old, rusted and broken machinery is brought for recycling voluntarily and it removes the trash from the streets. As long as it's legal, it's fine, he said. But if metal prices reach the heights they did just a year ago, police said, they expect to see a drastic increase in thefts.

One year ago, when the price of copper hovered above $3 a pound, the sheriff's department was seeing about 40 metal theft cases a month. With a pound of copper now at about $1.46, Investigator Brown said, he was assigned just five cases in December.

Jim Jankowski, a spokesman for Newell Recycling, said the slumping metal prices have cut down the number of traders in recent months but the kinds of things haven't changed much.

"We're not seeing anything different," Mr. Jankowski said. "We're just seeing less of everything."

Reach Adam Folk at (706) 823-3339 or adam.folk@augustachronicle.com.