Water Meter Thefts Are On the Rise in Argentina

This June will mark our 10-year-anniversary of living here in Cordoba, Argentina, and this country still manages to surprise us in a lot of ways.

We've dealt with the good and the bad (and most recently VERY BAD). Our friends and family back home think the situation here is insane when we tell them about what goes on around here. Like three weeks ago when I woke up to the sound of incessant knocking. Now usually, we avoid contact with the locals. This includes our neighbors because they're usually just trying to talk to us to get gossip about our lives. Sometimes, it's a beggar asking for $10 Argentine pesos in exchange for the cheapest trash bags in existence. We also get the occasional bible thumper (usually, it's a Jehovah's Witness), which we avoid like the plague. But generally, speaking, when something bad happens to our house, like our walls being vandalized or our house getting robbed, the neighbors are nowhere to be found.

So, our policy has been to avoid contact with them whenever possible, especially in light of the pandemic, which is not over, despite the locals acting like it is. But that day, they kept on knocking and knocking and it was driving me nuts. So, I finally decided to look through the window to see what was happening, and that's when I realized why they were knocking.

There was a ton of water gushing from the sidewalk outside of my house, and it was hemorrhaging onto the street. I had no idea what had happened, so I did what I usually do under these circumstances. I contacted the property owners, who happen to be my folks. To my surprise, they knew what was happening because one of my neighbors had rushed over to their house to tell them.

It turns out that someone had stolen our water meter. 

I couldn't believe it! People steal cars, purses, wallets and cellphones. They rob houses, too. But who wastes their time stealing a water meter from someone's house? Apparently, it's a lot more common than I thought.

I was able to get someone from the water department to come down and shut the valve off while they installed a new pipe. When I asked the technician if this happens often in Argentina, he claimed that it happens all the time. He added that it doesn't matter how rich or how poor the neighborhood is. Thieves go after the water meter and the pipes attached to them because they contain copper, which thieves can apparently sell for money (and possibly drugs).

The technician also warned me that thieves not only steal water meters but also the gas cables as well. Unfortunately, the water meter and the gas cables are in front of the house and easily accessible to thieves and vandals.

Now, I get that the Argentine economy is in the toilet (more so than it usually is). This drives some of the locals to take desperate actions to put food on their table. But stealing water meters from your neighbors? Come on! That's a new low!