Officials with the Lower Thames Valley Conservation Authority (LTVCA) are once again having to deal with the aftermath of vandalized and stolen equipment.
The LTVCA sent a tweet this week that stated the hydrometric gauging station, located on Grand Avenue East in Chatham, had been vandalized on July 10.
Jason Wintermute, water management supervisor, said some equipment -- such as an air temperature sensor and a series of solar panels that power the gauge house -- had also been stolen.
Wintermute said the stolen equipment will need to be replaced but there's no estimate as to how much that will cost.#HydrometricGauging Station at 300 Grand Ave. E., Chatham was vandalized July 10th,equipment was stolen. Please notify the Police if you see suspicious activity. They are used to operate Chatham’s #flood control structures, which protect us during floods. Vandalism affects us all pic.twitter.com/EGrqdzUL7j
— Lower Thames CA (@LTVCA) July 29, 2019
"Those gauge stations are a partnership between three agencies -- the federal government, the provincial government, and the conservation authorities," he said. "In this case, the equipment that was stolen is the responsibility of an agency called the Water Survey of Canada, which is a branch of Environment Canada so they'll be replacing those [items]."
To make matters worse, Wintermute said the gauge house that was vandalized had just been replaced last year.
“A tree fell on the gauge house last September and basically anything that was stealable after that got stolen,” he said. “So it was rebuilt last winter and it had gone through pretty unscathed so I think we kind of let our guard down.”
As to what this piece of equipment does, Wintermute said there are a couple of gauge stations within the community that are used to operate flood control infrastructure.
"The Sixth Street dam, which prevents water from backing up and flooding the south end of Chatham when there's a really high event on the Thames River, this is one of two gauges that gets used for the operation of that dam," he said. "It's also the gauge that every flood has been recorded against going back to the 1920s."
The LTVCA is no stranger when it comes to having equipment stolen or vandalized. Wintermute said it has happened "quite a bit" in the past. He said there was a noticeable uptick in 2015 and it "really escalated" last year.
"People were actually tearing the phone lines that run under the building, they were tearing the phone line right out of the ground and stealing it," he said. “They had broken into the hut before, they tore lines out that ran down to the water [which were used] to get water level information.”
"Then we had a little reprieve and it looks like things are starting up again this year."
Moving forward, Wintermute said they’ll have to find people to monitor their equipment more frequently, however, recent funding cuts make that difficult.
"It makes it tougher for staffing," he said. "We don't have quite as many bodies to be out there, making replacements and things like that. We'll probably have to rely more on the federal government for this [type of situation]."
Wintermute said it’s possible the thieves were after copper wiring when the vandalism and theft occurred. However, the station contained “almost no” copper.
“It’s really baffling that people would vandalize something that’s so important to the city,” he said.
