A growing number of copper pipe thefts in North Toronto and Forest Hill have left locals in disbelief. One of those affected, real estate agent Mary-Anne Talbot, said she was shocked when she first realized the copper pipes were missing from a house she was selling.
“I said [to the owners] ‘it’s really damp in here, did you turn off the heat,’” she recalled. “I opened the cupboards under the sink and the pipes were gone.”
Talbot’s experience with the Woburn Avenue home isn’t unique.
Const. Tony Vella, a Toronto Police spokesperson, said thieves have been targeting high-end homes in particular. Most times, the homes have been under construction and the newly installed copper pipes end up being stolen when the site is left unattended.
“They’ll go onto the construction sites, into these homes and remove the copper piping, which they’re selling to make a profit,” said Vella, in reference to the thieves.
Det. Sgt. Savas Kyriacou, from Toronto police, said several vacant houses in the surrounding area have also been targeted and that thieves will go after the older homes. Many old houses still contain the original copper piping that used to be commonly installed.
At the current going rate of three dollars per pound for copper, in these cases, most thieves are making approximately 100 dollars from the copper piping they remove from each home, said Vella.
However, in terms of safety, the cost can be much greater. During one copper heist last month at a house on Glen Park Avenue, when the thieves cut into the copper piping they ended up rupturing a gas line. According to Vella, the leak could have easily led to an explosion.
“People in the immediate area were at risk,” said Vella. “It was dangerous.”
According to Timothy Somers, a local Toronto police community safety officer, in addition to copper piping, copper eavestroughs have also been targeted by thieves.
“Some houses have copper eavestroughs because they’re interested in it turning green … it looks nice,” said Somers, who added that he has seen the entire trough removed from a house.
He said most cases of residential copper theft involve thieves who are looking for an easy way to make some money.
The more expert thieves, he said, tend to go for industrial sites where entire rolls of copper cable worth thousands of dollars have been stolen.
In some cases, copper theft goes beyond buildings. Last June, a TTC union president was arrested and charged with stealing TTC copper wire and selling it to a scrap yard.
A few years ago, 800 copper vases were stolen from West-end Toronto cemetery Arbor Memorial. Gary Carmichael, a spokesperson for the company that manages the cemetery, said most of the vases were returned. However, he also said a cemetery in St. Catharines was recently robbed of vases and said that copper theft will likely continue to be a problem.
“As long as scrap dealers are prepared to pay for the vases, clearly there’s a risk that somebody will steal them,” he said. According to Kyriacou, scrap yards are largely unregulated because identifying copper pieces can be difficult.
Regarding the rise of copper theft in some residential areas, Talbot said she never would have expected to find what she did.
“On either side of this house, you have really substantial homes, caring families,” she said. “It was really quite a shock when I saw the pipes were cut.”
