Montco man charged in $3M damage to defunct power plant
Two arrested near plant in late July
Two Philadelphia-area men are in Berks County Prison after Cumru Township police apprehended them on the Thun Trail near the former Titus Generating Station, where several recent break-ins and thefts of copper equipment caused an estimated $3 million in damage, investigators said.
Police were called to several burglaries at Titus during July, with most of the crimes believed to have taken place on weekends when workers for the owner of the Poplar Neck Road property were not on site.
Investigators caught a break on July 31 when two witnesses reported seeing a man leaning against a steel support column smoking a cigarette shortly after 8 p.m., police said in the arrest papers.
According to reports filed by police:
The man, later identified as Michael A. Nicolai, 40, of Philadelphia, discovered he was being watched and ran off. The witnesses called police.
About 10 minutes later, Cumru Sgt. Kimberly Brown observed Nicolai and another man, later identified as Michael Kostelny, 44, of Cheltenham Township, Montgomery County, running on the Thun section of the Schuylkill River Trail. They were heading toward Brentwood Industries from the Titus property.
Brown confronted the men and separated them.
Nicolai told Brown that he rode a train to Reading and took a walk along the trail with Kostelny. But there hasn’t been train service between Reading and Philadelphia for 40 years.
Nicolai denied being on the NRG Titus property and having any knowledge of or involvement with copper thefts at the facility.
Kostelny told Brown that he and Nicolai were driven to the area by Nicolai’s girlfriend. He said he and Nicolai were walking back and forth along the bike trail. Kostelny also denied knowledge or involvement in the burglaries at Titus.
Police found a truck registered to Kostelny parked unattended at Brentwood Industries, which is often used to access the Thun Trail.
Detective Chris Lis interviewed the witnesses, who said they observed Nicolai near the plant.
The witness found copper wire shreds that had been removed from a grounding strap in the area where Nicolai was spotted. A burnt cigarette was found nearby.
The witness also found a come-along tool attached to a wire that was in the process of being removed from the conduit about 15 feet from where the shreds were found.
When confronted with the witness accounts, both suspects admitted to entering through a hole in the fence.
In addition to the charges related to the July 31 breakin, Kostelny and Nicolai were charged in one of the earlier burglaries.
In mid-July plant workers reported copper wire had been stolen from four structures on the site between July 3 and July 12. Wire was cut from the breakers. Also stolen were battery bus bars, which are made of pure copper and have copper wire running to them.
The thieves cut copper wire and pipes from one building and appeared to have used the plant’s electrical outlets to plug in a battery charger for power tools they used to remove the copper. A plant official reported finding a charger that wasn’t compatible with the rechargeable tools used at the plant.
The official believed the trespassers used an inactive gate that was secured with a chain and lock. The company’s master key did not work in the lock that the intruders evidently installed after removing the company’s lock.
There were tire impressions along paths to buildings that were part of the crime, even though no employees would have driven there.
Lt. George Kuriger Jr. said Wednesday that Cumru police and other law-enforcement agencies are investigating the thefts and that other individuals are believed to be involved.
Kuriger said the latest loss estimate from the property owners is $3 million.
Kostelny and Nicolai were committed to Berks County Prison in lieu of $250,000 bail and $500,000 bail, respectively, to await a hearing after arraignment before District Judge David L. Yoch.
The charges include burglary, receiving stolen property, theft and related counts.
The aging power plant began the deactivation process Sept. 1, 2013, and was fully decommissioned in June 2014.
Titus Station was one of hundreds of coal-fired plants in the U.S. that have been shut down in favor of facilities that use cleaner natural gas.
A King of Prussia company plans to repurpose the plant into a plastic recycling facility that would take trash and turn it into plastic pellets. It would be the first U.S. facility for ReFined Plastics LLC, Joe D’Ascenzo, president and chief technology officer of the advanced recycling company, told the Reading Eagle.