Residents in multiple Melbourne suburbs have been left without water after thieves stole copper water meters amid a nationwide epidemic of South Africa-style scrap metal theft.
Homes in South Kingsville were targeted last week, forcing Great Western Water to install temporary rubber replacement pipes, and locals say water meter theft has become a major issue in the area. Similar thefts took place in Dandenong on October 8.
One South Kingsville resident said it a “huge inconvenience” for the street, while another said neighbours were considering putting metal cages around their meters to protect them, the Maribyrnong Leader reported.
They must have gone through the whole area … a lot of neighbours were affected,” he said.
“It feels like if there’s a copper pipe out the front, they will just go in and take it and off they go. If they hit a couple of streets they can clean up a few hundred dollars in one night”.
A plumber said the stolen meters could be sold for between $30 and $50 on the scrap metal market, and Victoria Police said thieves were targeting “roadways, new estates, construction sites and manufacturing locations”.
It comes after copper thieves targeted Tesla superchargers in Ballarat last month, train lines into Melbourne were shut down due to stolen cables, and authorities said they suspected a bronze statue of explorer Matthew Flinders was stolen from Mornington to be sold as scrap metal.
Copper theft has been on the rise in Australia in recent years, with scrap metal thieves causing phone and internet outages and knocking out street lights, and lighting at suburban sporting facilities.
The South Australian government last year introduced a bill to crack down on scrap metal theft after more than 2,000 incidents at building sites in 2023-24, costing an estimated $70 million a year.
In Queensland, copper theft has been costing state-owned electricity distribution operators about $4.5 million every year – prompting them to replace thousands of kilometres in underground and overhead copper cabling across the state’s southeast with less valuable aluminium.
Header image: A temporary replacement on one of the South Kingsville meters (Maribyrnong Leader).
