FBI Probes Theft of Water Supply Maps

With concerns about terrorism rising, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into a recent break-in at a construction site near an East Bay water supply, authorities said Wednesday.

Thieves stole several map books that describe the water supply for 22 Bay Area cities, including Oakland and Berkeley, along with a tool used to open water valves, said Charles Hardy, spokesman for the East Bay Municipal Utility District.

Hardy said the district, which serves 1.3 million customers, is in the middle of a large earthquake retrofit effort and has construction sites scattered throughout its sprawling boundaries. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, there has been a rash of construction-related thefts.

Hardy was hard-pressed to describe the Sunday theft near San Pablo Reservoir in Richmond. He did not want to dismiss it as a simple construction-site crime. But though it was the first time that maps of the district were stolen, he said, the maps are public record.

“We don’t want to alarm anyone,” he said, “nor make them think that the district has been compromised by this theft, because it hasn’t.”

Like other utilities throughout the state, the East Bay district has been working with federal authorities to increase security around the water supply system in the last month. As a result, Hardy said, the FBI is investigating the crime.

Andrew Black, an FBI spokesman in San Francisco, said the alleged crime “appears to be a random act of theft,” and noted that his agency does not want to “unduly alarm” the public.

“However, because [the incident] deals with the possible control of water mains, and due to the close proximity in time of the terrorist attacks, we cannot be too cautious,” Black said.

“Given the environment that we live in today, you can’t take anything for granted,” Hardy said, “nor should you. . . . But I can say that the theft does not jeopardize the system.”

Richmond Police Sgt. Enos Johnson said a district supervisor noticed a broken lock at a water district substation on Sunday. The supervisor discovered that a truck had been broken into and the maps and tool were missing, along with some gasoline. The truck was dusted for fingerprints. There are no suspects.

Johnson said the incident “could be a simple theft” or it could be “an extreme.”

“If somebody knew what they were doing, they could shut down water in a certain area or areas,” Johnson said. If that happened, people would be “inconvenienced by it, and it would take time for the water company to find out which valve had been shut down.”

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Times staff writer Maura Dolan contributed to this report.