City officials are working to put a lid on the free banquets enjoyed by Norway rats in Boston by asking residents and business owners to change their habits for handling the trash.
Currently, city ordinances do not require trash containers to have a lid, and allow people to put trash on the curb in tied plastic bags the day before the scheduled collection. Winds can often blow trash out of barrels, and rats are able to gnaw through plastic.
"The Public Works Department would love to see every resident in every neighborhood in the city use a trash container with a lid on it," said Frank O'Brien, the executive assistant to the city's public works commissioner, speaking during a hearing called yesterday by Councilor at Large Michael Flaherty.
Flaherty said he was prompted to hold the meeting because his office, as well as the Inspectional Services Division, has been receiving hundreds of complaints from residents. More than 1,675 complaints had been logged through October, a 38 percent increase over the first 10 months of 2006, he said.
Rats are drawn to the easy eats, and because they are prolific breeders, their numbers can swell in no time when they have a steady diet of readily accessible trash, say specialists on the rodents.
During the hourlong hearing, several residents spoke about their close encounters with Norway rats, a species believed to have originated in Central Asia that spread throughout Europe in the Middle Ages and eventually migrated to the United States.
"I see them regularly," said Victor Brogna, the president of North End/Waterfront Residents Association. "They come out, look at me, and go back in," he said, referring to the brown rodents that live near the mouth of the Callahan Tunnel, where he often walks.
"Perhaps they recognize me," he said, laughing.
The North End is one of several neighborhoods that has chronic rat control problems, but Flaherty said, "This issue the city has been dealing with for hundreds of years. It's the number one issue in the North End and throughout a number of neighborhoods in the city."
Other neighborhoods that generate a large number of complaints from residents include the Back Bay and Beacon Hill.
The city has been issuing fliers and conducting educational campaigns to get residents and restaurants to better secure perishable refuse, but will also be more aggressive in enforcing the city's regulation on when trash can be placed on the curb. The city also plans to continue efforts to bait and trap rats and to improve street sweeping to cut down on the garbage the rodents use as snacks.
O'Brien said yesterday he would study the impact of shortening the period of time that trash can legally sit on the curb before collection. The Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay asks its residents to put trash out starting at 6 a.m. on the day of collection, a guideline that has been widely followed by residents there, with some degree of success.
Last October, d-CON, a national rodent control company, rated Boston as the third most likely city to experience a surge in the rat population. Boston ranked high because of the city's age, its proximity to the water, an abundance of restaurants, and the density of its neighborhoods.
John Meaney, health inspector with Boston's Inspectional Services Department, said that the city is not infested and that the survey by d-CON was not scientific.
"I don't think we're out of control," Meaney said at the meeting.
