Buying or Selling Scrap Metal? Colorado is Cracking Down on Stolen Copper.

What This Bill Actually Does

House Bill 26-1101 tackles a very specific, highly frustrating problem across Colorado: the epidemic of thieves stripping copper wire and metal components from streetlights, cell towers, and active construction sites. Rather than just increasing penalties for the thieves themselves—who are often incredibly difficult to catch in the act—this legislation targets the financial incentive. It goes directly after the point of sale, essentially putting scrap yards, recyclers, and junk shops on notice that they can no longer turn a blind eye to shady materials.

Currently, Colorado law has existing rules for dealing in commodity metals, but this bill carves out a new, highly regulated category: metals from critical infrastructure. The bill defines this as any metal component used in communication, transportation, or housing infrastructure where its theft poses an imminent threat to life, physical safety, or the basic supply of those services to the public. Think power grid components, railway copper, broadband lines, or major telecommunications wire.

Under this bill, if a scrap yard or buyer knows—or should know—that a metal is from critical infrastructure, they are flat-out banned from paying the seller in cash, regardless of the amount. They must pay by check or use a payment system that takes a photograph of the seller at the time of the transaction. Furthermore, the buyer cannot even legally possess these specific metals without a written certification on the official letterhead of the person or company that transferred it, proving the seller has the legal right to scrap it.

The legislation also creates new criminal offenses, including "unlawful possession of critical infrastructure" and "failure to report stolen critical infrastructure." It even lowers the dollar threshold for serious penalties. Normally, commodity metal violations become a Class 5 felony when the value hits $5,000. For critical infrastructure metals, that felony threshold drops to just $2,000. Finally, the bill includes a strict legal standard called a rebuttable presumption. If the insulating casing of a wire is burned or smoldered off—a classic trick thieves use to strip wire quickly and hide identifying marks—the law automatically assumes the buyer should have known it was stolen critical infrastructure, unless the buyer can explicitly prove otherwise.

What It Means for You

For the average Colorado resident, this bill is mostly working in the background to keep your life running smoothly. If you've ever dealt with a dark intersection because someone stole the copper out of the streetlights, or experienced a sudden cellular outage because a local tower was stripped of its grounding bars, this legislation is trying to stop that exact headache. By making it incredibly difficult for thieves to fence stolen wire for quick cash, the state is hoping the thefts will dry up.

However, if you are a working professional in the trades—like an independent electrician, a plumber, or a general contractor—this bill will directly impact how you handle your scrap. It is incredibly common for tradespeople to take leftover wire and pipe from legitimate jobs to the local salvage yard for a little extra weekend cash. Under current law, you can get paid in cash for commodity metals up to $300. If this bill passes, and the yard decides your leftover materials look like they came from critical infrastructure, that cash exception disappears. You will be paid by check, your photo will be taken, and you will be expected to provide documentation proving where the metal came from.

Be prepared for scrap yards to become overly cautious. Because the penalties for them are so steep (up to a Class 5 felony), they might start turning away perfectly legal scrap if you don't have your paperwork in order. If you regularly recycle materials from job sites, you need to change your habits now to avoid getting turned away at the scale.

• Keep your receipts: If you are scrapping wire from a job, bring the original purchase receipts or the work order to prove the material is yours to sell.
• Get it in writing: If you are an employee taking scrap on behalf of your boss, get a signed letter on your company's official letterhead authorizing you to negotiate the sale.
• Track the hearings: If you want to weigh in on how this affects independent contractors, keep an eye on the House Judiciary Committee schedule and consider submitting written testimony.

What It Means for Your Business

If you own a salvage yard, junk shop, or recycling center in Colorado, House Bill 26-1101 fundamentally changes your daily compliance protocols. You are being deputized as the gatekeeper against infrastructure theft, and the liability of buying stolen goods is being placed squarely on your shoulders.

The most urgent operational change is the ban on cash transactions for critical infrastructure metals and the requirement for written certification. You can no longer just take a seller's word for it. If a commercial contractor sends a runner to drop off wire, that runner must hand you a certification on the transferor's official company letterhead stating they are authorized to sell it.

The bill does provide a specific "safe harbor" provision if you accidentally take in restricted materials, but the timeline is aggressive. If your yard unknowingly takes possession of critical infrastructure metals buried inside a mixed load of regular scrap, you have a strict duty to notify a local law enforcement or municipal code enforcement agency by the end of the next business day after discovering it. You must then quarantine that material—setting it aside and not selling it—until authorities determine its legal status. Failure to report it by that next-day deadline is a brand new criminal offense.

Additionally, you need to train your intake staff on the new rebuttable presumption regarding burned wire. If your scales accept wire with the casing burned or smoldered off, the state will legally presume you knew it was restricted infrastructure. Ignorance is no longer a valid legal defense if the wire looks torched.

• Update your intake checklists: Require staff to ask for letterhead authorization for any high-grade wire, communication cables, or housing infrastructure metals before unloading.
• Establish a quarantine zone: Dedicate a specific, marked area in your yard where discovered restricted metals can be set aside pending police clearance.
• Train your scale operators: Make sure whoever is handing out cash or writing checks understands the visual signs of "burned or smoldered" wire, as accepting it now carries significant felony risk if the value exceeds $2,000.

Follow the Money

According to the nonpartisan Legislative Council Staff, this bill is expected to have a shockingly minimal fiscal impact on the state budget. In fact, the official Fiscal Note projects zero dollars in new state revenue and zero dollars in new state expenditures for the upcoming fiscal years.

How is that possible when the bill creates brand new felony crimes? The state analysts looked at the historical data for the existing comparable offense regarding commodity metals. Between the 2022-2023 and 2024-2025 fiscal years, there were exactly zero offenders sentenced and convicted under the current commodity metal dealing laws. Because prosecutors historically haven't heavily utilized the existing statutes to secure convictions, the state assumes these new, more specific charges won't suddenly flood the courts or the Department of Corrections. Local governments—who fund district attorneys and county jails—might see a tiny, negligible bump in workload if local police start aggressively enforcing the new scrap yard reporting deadlines, but overall, this is a policy shift that won't cost taxpayers money.

Where This Bill Stands

House Bill 26-1101 was officially introduced in the House on February 3, 2026, and has been assigned to the House Judiciary Committee.

The bill enjoys strong bipartisan sponsorship, spearheaded by Representatives Cecelia Espenoza (D) and Matt Soper (R) in the House, and Senators William Lindstedt (D) and Byron Pelton (R) in the Senate. When a bill targeting property crime has prime sponsors from both sides of the aisle, it usually signals a very smooth path to passage. Property crime, especially theft that causes municipal outages and frustrates private developers, is a universally unpopular issue at the Capitol.

Expect this bill to move quickly through the committee process. Because it requires no state funding, it will likely bypass the notoriously slow Appropriations Committee entirely. If passed and signed by the Governor, the new rules will take effect immediately upon signature.