On September 22, the Boston City Council referred the Committee on City and Neighborhood Services to hold a virtual hearing for Docket #0935 on the subject of pest control and illegal dumping of trash in the City. The hearing was facilitated and sponsored by Councilors Ed Flynn and Liz Breaden.
The goal of the hearing was to discuss the issues and potential solutions to address the rise in recent months of rodents and illegal dumping on the streets. Since a lot of Boston’s downtown neighborhoods have residential and business districts mixed together, it is important to address these issues as a community, outlined Councilor Kenzie Bok.
According to Councilor Flynn, “the CDC has warned that environmental health and rodent control agencies should expect reports of unusual or aggressive rodent behavior due to restaurants and other food sources for rats and rodents closing down during this pandemic.” Illegal dumping is another problem that can attract more rodents and cause other public health issues.
While in many neighborhoods, pests and poor trash disposal have been a perennial problem even before the pandemic, changes in behavior have contributed to the problem. “What happened was the perfect storm,” said Assistant Commissioner from inspectional services department (ISD) Leo Boucher. “We had this awful COVID-19 to begin with, and the quarantines began in March. At the same time as that occurred, spring is a breeding season for rodents.” In addition, people reverted to ordering takeout food, which means there was less commercial trash and more personal trash in residential areas. As a result, rodents migrated to their food source.
The primary problem identified was that the tightly packed city does not allow for proper storage of trash, before it gets picked up by waste trucks. “Trash placed on the street does cause rodents,” said Boucher. “Our primary focus is proper storage of trash, proper storage of that food waste.” At ISD, they have been finding ways to resolve things through public education. Boucher said, “Our inspectors are focusing on making sure that folks understand how they can prevent rodent activity in the neighborhoods.”
“Every receptacle is required to have tight fitting covers,” said Boucher. There are also ‘zones’ that determine the type of waste disposal that is required. For instance, “If that building is zoned as a church, they’re required to secure private pickup. They’re not eligible for city pickup,” said Boucher.
However, due to the tightly packed nature of the city and intermingling of residential and business districts, proper trash storage is scarce.
A panelist at the meeting, Asian American Civic Association’s (AACA) COO Edward Hsieh said, “Chinatown is one of the areas that does suffer severely from lack of space to put bins. And so there has to be some sort of investment, some sort of innovation to make it happen.” Hsieh proposed a solution similar to that of BID – Downtown Boston Business Improvement District. The BID refers to the area in Downtown Crossing and Boston’s Financial District’s constituents coming together to fund regular cleanups, other programs and services to meet area needs.
Hsieh said, “That’s something that we are very interested in exploring here. Obviously, Chinatown is not as affluent as Downtown Crossing or the financial district. So if the city council could work with us to find ways to either fund that or to allow the neighborhood to put into that in a contract out on its own, instead, or it could be an innovation district, too.”
CEO of AACA Mary Chin added, “Chinatown is unique but not the only place in Boston that has a real problem with space. We really need to be tougher on the owners and landlords of our site, because they need to do what the law requires, which is to take care of their tenants. They need to make sure that there are barrels for their tenants.” In addition, Chin stated, we must “have our community do our part, which is to change our behavior, educate ourselves, and then enforce ourselves.”
In terms of enforcement, Boucher encourages people to report improper trash disposal through their 311 hotline. “That 311 complaint automatically gets generated to ISD and automatically goes into my queue of complaints,” he said.
In a statement made by another panelist, the President of the Allston Civic Association, Anthony D’Isidoro said, “Also, let’s not be derelict in our duty, which forces residents to take matters into their own hands and disperse poison and traps in an irresponsible manner, endangering people and other forms of life. The city needs to step up and recognize that there are consequences to the public policy they continue to pursue. A proportional and consistent response is required to ensure quality of life issues will never take a backseat. And we value the health and safety of every resident who calls Boston their home.”
In her closing remark, Councilor Kenzie Bok said, “The onus is on us to kind of think about what we can do to step things up.”
