Larry Zhender

At one time nearly 2,000 brass plaques along the Walnut Street Bridge honored donors to the historic structure’s renovation.

More than 700 of those markers now are missing, according to a Times Free Press count Friday.

“It’s discouraging,” said Garnet Chapin, who led the fundraising drive for renovation donations. “I don’t know that we can change public behavior, but it seems like we should do something to replace the ones that were stolen.”

Each of the honored private donors gave $100 toward the bridge’s $4.5 million renovation, which was completed in 1993.

Whether they were pilfered as a keepsake of a Scenic City trip or because the metal could be melted down and sold no one is sure, Mr. Chapin and Larry Zehnder, head of Chattanooga’s parks and recreation department, said.

“It isn’t something new that’s just happened in the last week,” Mr. Chapin said of the thefts. “It certainly seems to have gotten worse lately, and that might be because of the cost of metal.”

Chattanooga police say scrap metal sales involve an increasing amount of stolen material because resale values have risen over the past few years. Local thieves crawl under houses to steal pipes, remove wiring and plumbing from unfinished construction projects and climb to the top of buildings to strip wire from industrial-sized air conditioning units to sell to scrap dealers, police say.

The issue caught attention at the state level in 2007. After several failed attempts to pass legislation cracking down on metal thefts during last year’s Tennessee General Assembly, a summer study committee took a closer look and recommended several new measures.

Companion bills based on those recommendations are pending in the House and Senate this year. The proposed legislation would require scrap metal dealers to register with the state and create more stringent requirements for both buyers and sellers during scrap metal transactions.

Shirley Pinkard, who was visiting from Florida this week, said she loves walking on the bridge and the thefts are a shame.

“The plaques are neat,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind having something like that on my desk at work. Maybe that’s where they are going.”

Now the connector between Chattanooga’s downtown waterfront and the North Shore, the once-condemned bridge benefited when private donors gave about $500,000 to its refurbishment, Mr. Chapin said. The city gave $2 million and $2 million came from federal grants, records show.

“What we are trying to do is come up with a system, a plan, that recognizes those donors and takes the temptation to steal the plaques away,” Mr. Zehnder said.

He thinks one larger marker bearing all the donors’ names might be more economical than individual ones, but city officials haven’t decided on anything, he said.

Mr. Chapin thinks replacing the plaques is more appropriate.

He would like the city, or some other group, to pay to have all the remaining plaques pulled up and then have new plastic plaques glued to the bridge with an epoxy adhesive.

“Brass is expensive, so it would cost a significant amount to replace (those plaques),” he said. “But plastic is cheaper, and it would reduce the desire to steal them.”

He said placing the donors’ names on one larger marker is “not what we promised the folks when we took their money.”

Mr. Chapin suggested that more plaques be sold to fund the replacement effort. He pointed out that groups hold fundraisers on the bridge, and he said perhaps they could share some of those proceeds with the city and help fund replacement plaques.