Grand Forks City Hall filed a complaint with city RCMP Wednesday, Sept. 9, after the city’s electric vehicle (EV) charging stations were knocked out in a spree of vandalism over the Labour Day weekend, according to a City Hall official.
City staff discovered the broken EV stations at City Hall and Gyro Park on the mornings of Friday, Sept. 4 and Tuesday, Sept. 8, according to Grand Forks’ utilities manager. Each station is worth around $5,000 and will cost yet more money for the city to re-install.
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The utilities manager couldn’t say when either of the EV stations will come back online.
Damage to library, street lamp
City staff also found extensive vandalism to a plug-in wall socket at the Grand Forks and District public library and to a nearby street lamp standard.
“It was just pure vandalism,” the utilities manager said.
In both instances, he said that someone had pulled out electrical wiring, making no apparent bid to salvage any wire or metal.
Meanwhile, City Hall hasn’t confirmed that any of these incidents were linked, or if more than one person was responsible.
RCMP respond
Grand Forks RCMP attended the destroyed EV charger at Gyro Park Tuesday, afternoon, detachment commander Sgt. Darryl Peppler confirmed.
The Gazette will update this story as Mounties continue their investigation.
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