City Aims To Starve Out Rats With New Trash Rules

NEW YORK, NY — City officials want to starve rats out of the neighborhoods they've infested. City Council lawmakers are considering a group of bills aimed at stopping New Yorkers from setting out a smorgasboard for the city's rodent residents.

One of the eight bills would give the city Department of Health authority to create "rat mitigation zones" in areas where there are high numbers of complaints about rats or where health officials have exterminated lots of the rodents, among other factors.

Buildings in those zones with at least nine apartments would have to set out garbage between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. on the morning trash is collected rather than the evening before. Another bill would force restaurants across the city to spray liquid leaking from trash bags off their sidewalks after garbage is picked up or face a fine.

"These simple solutions can deprive rats of further opportunities to freeload off our garbage," said Councilwoman Margaret Chin (D-Manhattan), who sponsored two of the bills.

Taking away rats' food supply is the best way to get rid of them, Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia told the Council's Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management at a Tuesday hearing.

They're most active at night and love to feed on garbage when it's left out on curb for hours before it's picked up, she said. One of Chin's bills would help limit the feeding frenzy, Garcia said.

"Instead of being out a minimum of 14 hours, we’re now minimizing that to two," Garcia said. "And partly, this is really based off what the health department tells us about when rats are happy and out there. They’re going to go have a midnight snack if they can."

Another bill under consideration would require restaurants in rat mitigation zones to separate their compost from their regular trash. Other legislation would stiffen penalties for littering and illegal dumping; force developers to try and get rid of rats to get construction permits; and let sanitation enforcers use information found in illegally dumped waste as evidence of a violation.

The city has made progress in its recent crackdown on rats in neighborhoods where they're most present, officials said. Another bill before the Council would require the Department of Health to issue an annual report on such progress in the rat mitigation zones.

Ten of the 45 "rat reservoirs" that the city has identified since 2015 are no longer in the city's program targeting those places considered an "ideal ecosystem" for the rodents, Deputy Health Commissioner Corinne Schiff said. Signs of rats and conditions that draw them have dropped 80 percent in 15 parks within the rat reservoirs, she said.

Mayor Bill de Blasio last July announced a $32 million effort to cut rat activity by up to 70 percent in rat-infested areas in Brooklyn, the South Bronx and Manhattan's Lower East Side. The city has used several tactics as part of that initiative, including replacing wire trash bins with steel cans and solar-powered trash compactors that are harder for rats to get into, Garcia said.

The Department of Health is also turning to dry ice to get rid of rats in parks, "a method that promises to be extremely effective at killing rats quickly and painlessly," Schiff said.

Several other agencies are involved in the fight against rats, officials said, including the Department of Buildings, the Office of Housing Preservation and Development, the Department of Education and the New York City Housing Authority.

"We can only truly succeed if everyone works together," Schiff said.

(Lead image: A rat moves near the subway tracks at Union Square in 2010. Photo by Frank Franklin II/Associated Press)