Loose wires protrude from a light pole along the Chester Creek Trail near Davenport Fields on Monday, Oct. 19. Copper wire that connects light poles was reportedly removed last week. (Bill Roth / ADN)
Airport Heights resident Helen O’Harra looked outside of her house on the evening of Oct. 10, confused. A strip of the Chester Creek Trail had suddenly gone dark.
“I’ve lived on the trail for over 30 years. I mean, it’s my backyard, and that was just weird,” she said.
O’Harra reported the outage to the municipality and posted to the neighborhood watch Facebook page. Out on the trail between the Middle Fork of Chester Creek and Davenport Fields, she noticed a light pole with its back plate missing and exposed electrical wires. One of her neighbors claimed to have once seen a man riding by on his bike carrying a coil of wire.
City officials are addressing a rise in the theft of copper taken from light poles along Anchorage’s city trail system, a problem mostly concentrated in northeast Anchorage, according to Public Works Director Kent Kohlhase.
While this type of theft has occurred before, light outages have become more prevalent over the last six to eight weeks as it began to get dark, he said.
Copper wire that connects light poles along the Chester Creek Trail near Davenport Fields has been removed, leaving the area dark at night. An access cover to the electrical system is ajar in the foreground. Photographed on Monday, Oct. 19. (Bill Roth / ADN)
Light outages have been reported near North Russian Jack Springs Park, and Tikishla, Sitka and Chanshtnu Muldoon parks, he said. Maintenance crews are also aware of four separate incidents along the section of Chester Creek Trail near Creekside Park where wiring has been stolen from 11 poles.
There may be others, Kohlhase said.
“I would guess it’s in the hundreds and hundreds of feet of wiring that’s been stolen,” he said.
Contracted electricians have already repaired some of the wiring. Repairs near Creekside Park cost about $20,000. It cost another $32,000 to replace the wiring stolen between the ballfield and DeBarr Road near North Russian Jack, Kohlhase said.
Each incident has been reported to the Anchorage Police Department, he said, although he was unaware exactly how many police reports had been filed over the last month.
After removing covers from trail lights and junction boxes, he said he suspects individuals are stripping out the wire and then selling it to recyclers. The municipality has had similar problems over the past several years with wire stolen from construction sites, he said.
City code currently requires scrap metal dealers to track from whom they receive recyclable material, including wiring. The Anchorage Assembly last updated the policy in 2024 to combat an increase of catalytic converter theft due to the valuable metals they contain and a lack of regulation in their resale.
To deter further light pole vandalism, Deputy Chief of Staff Nora Morse said the municipality plans to reach out the recyclers to make sure they are aware of the policy. Staff also hope to glean what patterns recyclers are seeing and if some people have been documented selling in bulk, she said.
As of Oct. 20, the trail lights near O’Harra’s home were still out, she said.
“My biggest concern is somebody’s going to get hurt because people commute on that trail all the time. … If there’s no lights, you’re not going to see the bear or the moose that’s crossing,” she said.
