Mayor de Blasio to expand war on rats in new NYC budget

NEW YORK (WABC) -- New York City's war on rats is about to heat up.

Mayor Bill de Blasio is expanding a rat removal program in his new budget.

The mayor is planning to devote close to $3 million to reduce the rat population in the five boroughs.

City officials say the 7 neighborhoods where the pilot program was tested have had up to a 90 percent drop in rat sightings.

The process begins with a three week assessment of the area with exterminators walking the neighborhood, looking for rat burrows and confirming the existence of a rat reservoir.

2 to 5 months of intense rat baiting follows the assessment. Burrows are targeted and closed, and follow up visits are used to assess the impact of the baiting.

The areas targeted in the first year of the pilot program included East Harlem, the East Village, Grand Concourse, Mount Hope and Belmont.

The budget plan calls for expanding the program to neighborhoods citywide and increasing the staff to 50 exterminators, public health sanitarians and a population biologist.

New funding and a new approach is creating better results in neighborhoods where residents are sick of seeing the rats.

"The rats is walking around, they bold, they don't even wait until the nighttime," said resident Vell Jamall. "They chilling outside right now drinking tea."

Caroline Bragdon, who heads up the city's new rat intervention program, explains how they started in known rat-infested neighborhoods.

"We did comprehensive surveys of every block, park, and subway, we counted rat burrows, we counted sewer systems that had evidence of rat activity," said Bragdon.

For the first time, they were able to use that information to track if their new approach really reduced rats.

Rats usually are most active at dusk and nightime, and pest control crews will follow the rats back to see where they're nesting.

The program also works with businesses in the neighborhood to make sure they're doing their part to keep garbage at bay.