Hot Water Heaters, Shower Stalls Stolen

Pintlar Corp. is missing 13 hot water heaters and four shower stalls. The items vanished from storage at the Bunker Hill Superfund site sometime after March 25.

“How did someone get out with all that? That’s what we’d like to know,” said Lt. Charles “Spike” Angle of the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office.

The heaters were located in an empty office building near the old zinc plant. The building is outside the gated area of the defunct smelter complex, where cleanup of heavy metals pollution is under way.

“It would be possible to just drive up and load items into a truck. It could have happened late at night. It could have happened over a period of days. Who knows?” Angle said.

Pintlar Corp. President Trey Harbert said he didn’t know who had reported the theft.

The electric heaters and stalls were new. They were to have been installed in a decontamination station Pintlar was building when the Environmental Protection Agency assumed control of the cleanup.

“The property is technically still ours until the bankruptcy, but we’ve turned it over to EPA. We have no access,” Harbert said.