First it was copper pipes from abandoned and even occupied houses that were being stolen, now its the manhole covers off the streets!!!

In these tough economic times where precious metals are escalating in value everything is up for grabs. In the NYTimes today - Francis McConnell is a field supervisor for the Philadelphia Water Department....His mission is to figure out who is stealing the city’s manhole covers and its storm drain and street grates, increasingly valuable commodities on the scrap market. More than 2,500 covers and grates have disappeared in the past year, up from an annual average of about 100. Thieves have so thoroughly stripped some neighborhoods on the city’s north and southwest sides that some blocks look like slalom courses, dotted with orange cones to warn drivers and pedestrians of gaping holes, some nearly 30 feet deep....One thing has helped. A Water Department worker, Fred Feoli, designed a way to lock the manhole covers from the inside. But so far, only 300 of the city’s more than 70,000 manhole and inlet covers have been locked