Depriving rats of food is New York’s goal, the largest city in the United States announced Wednesday. It includes a plan for three particularly affected neighborhoods aimed at the management of garbage, the main source of food for rodents.
Present in the port city since the middle of the 18th century, rats are around two million in New York, according to a study published in 2014 by a doctoral student at Columbia University.
The town hall will release $ 32 million (31 million francs) for this new plan, focused on the three most infested neighborhoods, namely Grand Concourse Avenue in the Bronx, an area encompassing Chinatown, the East Village and the Lower East Side in Manhattan, and the two neighborhoods of Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant in northwest Brooklyn.
Rethinking garbage management
It is above all about rethinking the management of garbage which is a major source of the proliferation of rats in the American financial capital. Shops, restaurants, offices or residences leave thousands of garbage bags on the sidewalk every day for several hours.
While the pickup is usually done from 6:00 a.m., the law allows bags to be left in front of buildings as early as 4:00 p.m. the day before, offering a “four-star coffee” to rodents right on the sidewalk, explained the service manager. cleanliness of the city, Kathryn Garcia.
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