If the Trail of Lights was held today, there wouldn't be much twinkle.
"It angers me, it really does," Troy Houtman with the city's Parks and Recreation Department said.
Houtman is angry because someone stole nearly 3 miles of buried power lines at Zilker Park. The lines, made mostly out of copper, are used to power the annual holiday light show.
"They had to work really hard all night long," Houtman said.
In fact, Houtman said it probably took at least two nights to pull the lines out of the ground.
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Copper theft
The city is unsure where the money to replace the copper will come from.
 
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"Obviously it was someone who knows the copper was here. We think that they scoped the site for several days, possibly even weeks, watching staff, learning our patterns before they came out and made the theft," he said.
"It is a huge problem," Det. James Mason, with the Austin Police Department, said.
So much so, that APD has two full time detectives that devote most of their time to copper theft.
"There's a market for it. They're selling it somewhere to somebody. Once those people are shut down who are taking it illegally, then there will be no market for it," Mason said.
The parks department isn't waiting for that to happen. They've installed new, almost theft-proof access panels around the park.
Now, they just need to find a way to come up with the almost $100,000 it will take to replace the stolen copper.
"We don't have the budget to replace that because that's not an item we typically replace," Houtman said.
But thanks to some thieves, it's an item they'll have to replace in order for the Trail of Lights to shine bright this year.
