In addition to its majestic, snow-capped mountains, verdant forests, sparkling lakes and rugged river gorges, the Washington landscape features vast stretches of cropland.

Cross-state motorists cruise daily, for example, past thousands of lonely acres in central Washington. If they don’t see farmers, they know they’re around by the farm implements, storage tanks and irrigation lines.

Such isolation goes with the agricultural lifestyle, but it has left today’s farmers vulnerable to thieves with drug cravings.

Fertilizer tanks, for example, contain materials called for in methamphetamine recipes. More recently, copper and aluminum – essential to farmers for irrigation pipes and the electrical lines that operate motors to pump water – have soared in value, attracting criminals who see a valuable commodity that can be moved in the scrap metal and recycling trade.

It’s not just a Washington state problem. China’s burgeoning economy is driving the cost of metals up around the globe, and drug makers and users are nothing if not opportunistic. They have been tearing apart air conditioners and catalytic converters, snatching wire from farms and construction sites, even pilfering manhole covers and cases from headstones and mausoleums. The damage done often costs more to repair than the stolen materials themselves are worth.

Wisely, Washington’s Legislature did this year what lawmakers in numerous other states have begun doing – made it harder for crooks to unload ill-gotten scrap metals.

The new law, which goes into effect July 22, imposes substantial new record-keeping and documentation requirements on businesses that buy scrap metal. Among other features, it requires the businesses to withhold payment for purchases worth more than $30 for 10 days and then to use a nontransferable check.

This is no small burden on scrap metal businesses, and not merely because of the paperwork. Price fluctuations in their business make a 10-day waiting period potentially costly. In California, which is on the verge of passing a similar bill, the state scrap recycling industry supported the measure, but only after the waiting period was reduced from 15 days to three.

The imposition on businesses will inconvenience the reputable ones along with the shady ones – just as pharmacies were affected by earlier legislation restricting the sale of cold medicines because pseudoephedrine is used in meth cooking.

The Legislature owes it to such businesses to keep an eye on the way the new law is implemented. If the consequences are more harsh to law-abiding businesses than the benefits can justify, some fine-tuning will be in order.

Meanwhile, business owners, as good citizens, need to recognize that they share in the responsibility to help prevent crime that their own trade, though legitimate, may innocently abet. It takes more than scenic mountains and rivers to make a state a good place to live.