PEABODY — As the number of rat complaints has risen by more than 400 percent in the last two years, the City Council is considering new rules to combat the rodents.
“We have definitely seen a dramatic uptick in complaints,” said Sharon Cameron, director of the city’s Health Department.
Among the factors that lead to potential rodent infestations are untended vegetable gardens, bird feeders, and trash. Rodents go where there is food.
“There are lots of factors contributing to the rise,” she said. “Experts say the change in climate and warmer temperatures is extending the breeding season.”
Rats reproduce less during winter as cold temperatures make it harder for rodents to survive. But as winters have become milder, in part due to climate change, rats have produced extra litters.
A single female rat can have up to 100 babies annually, so a small increase can have a huge impact on the population, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health.
Experts say the rat population explosion could help spread 11 diseases, including E. coli and the bubonic plague.
The measures up for discussion by the council include:
- Property owners must have sufficient rodent-proof, covered trash containers for waste and recyclables.
- Receptacles cannot be placed on the street before noon of the collection day and must be removed by noon the following day.
- Developers of new construction must implement a pest management control plan two weeks before they break ground.
- The city’s 366 restaurants must devise a pest management plan.
- Violators face fines of up to $300 a day.
The problem is not limited to Peabody. Public health directors on the North Shore are seeing the same increases, Cameron said.
“For all of us, sanitation is the biggest factor because rats are looking for food, water and places to live,” she said. “They like to live within 150 feet of their food source, most of the time they are able to find food around us and the most common place is from trash containers.”
While the city has hired A1 Exterminators to bait the city’s sewers, Cameron said every time they’ve gone back to check, the bait has not been touched, a sign rats are getting plenty of food elsewhere.
While rats are a national problem, the federal government is no longer involved in controlling rats as it is with many other public health problems. Between 1969 and 1982, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention distributed grants under its Urban Rat Control program, but that ended under former President Ronald Reagan. As a result, cities are on their own.
Last month, Revere spent $900,000 to provide homeowners with 65-gallon trash carts to dispose of trash. Overflowing trash barrels, the use of flimsy trash bags left on sidewalks, and careless disposal of garbage have all led to the prominent rat problem, the city said.
The goal of the heavy-duty, rodent-proof barrels is to restrict access to food sources, according to Mayor Brian Arrigo.
“Inadvertently, we are treating rats like pets rather than predators,” Arrigo told The Item.
