NYC NOW - September 18, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

The MTA says its new five-year, $65 billion construction plan is focused on keeping critical infrastructure in good shape. Meanwhile, Brooklyn City Council Member Susan Zhuang is facing an ethics probe after she was accused of biting a police officer at a protest in July. WNYC’s Michelle Bocanegra reports. Plus, New York City is hosting its inaugural National Urban Rat Summit this this week where experts can share best practices on rodent mitigation. WNYC’s Sean Carlson speaks with Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann and Matt Frye from Cornell University who both research pest mitigation in urban settings.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Wednesday, September 18th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. The MTA says its new five-year construction plan prioritizes maintaining the nation's largest transit system. MTA chair, General Lieber, says the $65 billion plan focuses on the state of good repair work to keep critical infrastructure in good shape. Now, I know that the question we're going to face quickly is, how are you going to fund all this? My question is, how do you not? How do you not invest in a system

that is the lifeblood of the city? It is up to state lawmakers and Governor Hockel to fund much of the plan. The $65 billion spending plan relies on money, though, coming from congestion pricing, which is on pause. Brooklyn City Council member Susan Jwarn. is facing an ethics probe from her colleagues after she was accused of sinking her teeth into a police officer at a protest this summer. WNIC's Michelle Boconegro has the store. A council spokesperson told WNYC its standards and ethics committee has opened proceedings against Zhuang, but that the matter would be paused for now pending separate charges from the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office against the council member. Shuang was charged the summer after she allegedly bit a deputy police chief while she was protesting a planned homeless shelter in her South Brooklyn district.

It's unclear if the council probe is about the same allegations. Schwang says she's following her lawyer's advice and declined to comment. 72 and partly sunny with a high risk of rip currents along ocean beaches, thread of coastal flooding tonight for southern Queens and southern Nassau counties and along the Jersey shore. Chance of showers today, mainly early afternoon, a high. I have a 75. Stay close. There's more after the break.

On WNYC, I'm Sean Carlson. New York City is hosting its inaugural National Urban Rat Summit this Wednesday and Thursday where experts can connect and share best practices on rodent mitigation. So joining us now are Jody Gangloff Kaufman and Matt Fry from Cornell University, who both research pet mitigation in urban settings,

and are part of the National Urban Rat Summit. Jody, can you first start us off with what is the most common rat that people do encounter in New York City? And why are they so resilient? And do you think the city will ever be rat free? The most common rat that you find in New York City is definitely the brown rat, or sometimes called the Norway rat. They're resilient because they reproduce quickly. They eat just about anything. They can swim.

They can climb. There's just so much about them that is adaptable. and will New York City ever be free of rats? I doubt it. But hopefully we can make a dent in the population. Matt, New York City has had a rat problem for years. Can you just give us a history of New York City's centuries-long campaign to cure the problem? And talk about why it is so difficult to control the population?

The rats that are in New York City, genetic studies have shown that they were probably first introduced to the New York area in the 1700s. and that population of rats has persisted in New York ever since. They do so well in cities because cities have a lot of people that produce a lot of trash. And that trash often contains food that sustains rat populations. Cities also have an exorinent amount of infrastructure that provides opportunities for them to nest in and survive out of reach of people that are trying to manage them. There have been numerous campaigns to try to mitigate rat populations, and all of those strategies have sort of taken a war on rats approach,

where they try to manage populations without addressing the conditions that contribute to rat populations. So some of the new research is showing that if we take approaches to eliminate food by containerizing trash, we'll do better at mitigating rat populations than just trying to kill them with trapping and baiting techniques. There is an estimated 3 million rats, speaking of the numbers here, roaming around the city. What are the health risks of having so many rats in such a densely populated place? So there's a variety of foodborne and febrile-inducing pathogens that are contained on the bodies

of rodents or in the bodies of rodents, but there are also ones. that are transferred by ectoparasites. So the risks that people face is when they're exposed to things like rodent urine or rodent feces or the ectoparasites like fleas, lice, and mites that come from rats, they are able to transfer pathogens from the rat to people. Jody, you mentioned that pretty much there's one kind of rat that people do encounter. Are there different types of rats in the city? Like, are rats in the subway a different species than rats in parks?

No, they're pretty much all the same, but there's a southern species of rat in North America called, it's the black rat. That one is not really adaptable to colder weather, so we don't see it that often, although you can find occasionally black rats in New York City. They get transported here. And I've heard that there are Gambian pouched rats occasionally, which I think are in the pet trade instead of being pests so much. And occasionally people will find one of those. What would you recommend that building supers do for rat mitigation if they're building a lot? is having a rat problem? For buildings, the best approach is to start with a good defense.

And we often recommend that looking at the building from a rat's perspective to keep them out with exclusion techniques is the best first approach. Rats only need about a quarter-size opening to enter into a building. So if we use rat or rodent-proof materials to prevent them from gaining access, that will reduce all the other issues that we have to deal with inside. Jody, you're probably familiar with the fact that Mayor Adams has made the city's war on rats, one of his top priorities, mayor, so much so that he appointed the city's first rat czar. Do you think that she's been successful in helping the city win its war against rats?

Well, she's largely at the helm of this rat summit. So, yes, I think she has been quite effective so far. I mean, it's hard to make change in a short amount of time like this. But one of the projects they have are to purchase new outdoor public garbage containers that are rat-proof. And I think they're trialling them in a neighborhood in the city. So that's an example of just thinking outside the box. You know, Matt, this one's for you. You mentioned mitigating trash and keeping a lid on it literally as being a strategy.

And Mayor Adams recently did make changes to rules around trash bins, like Jody's saying, requiring buildings to put out their garbage. bins with secure lids or else landlards are going to face a fine. It's the latest effort to fight the rat population. Do you think it'll help much? Absolutely. Rodents are great at gnawing through a variety of different types of materials. And so ensuring that the receptacles are rodentproof and will prevent them from accessing the garbage is a great first step. We have a number of lessons from the scientific literature and also our experiences during the COVID-19 lockdown that suggests once the trash is removed, the rats really struggle to survive. In addition to that, there's a whole variety of techniques that are used to mitigate rats by killing them directly.

So trapping, poisoning, and other types of lethal management. But really, any attempt that is looking to wide-scale managed rats has to start with addressing the trash problem. Matt, what is an interesting fact about rats in urban areas that is interesting to you, that most people don't know about. As a species, they are very interesting. The science has shown that they have a lot of emotional responses to things that we didn't previously think they exhibit. So if they make a decision that they don't like, they actually feel regret.

If they see a fellow rat is in a state of distress, they will actually help them at the expense of their own happiness. but that doesn't mean that if they're in a building or around a place where people are living, working, and eating, that we shouldn't manage their populations. What do you hope comes out of the first National Rat Summit? And do you think there's anything to public can gain? Well, it is a summit for municipalities and academics. We don't have like practitioners here or people who actively work in pest control.

But we're hoping to have some shareable information, like a mix of, all the things, all the ideas that come out, and also maybe a game plan for research that will happen in the future. What about you, Matt? What do you hope comes out of the summit? Until the past couple years, even though all municipalities that have rats are facing the same challenges, there hasn't been any opportunity for dialogue between the various municipalities. And so everyone's operating in a vacuum. So this will be a good opportunity for them to hear from the experts about what techniques work and the current science on rats, but then also bring back some of those messages and have more communication about what's working in their specific city and what are

opportunities for others to employ in their cities. That was Matt Fry and Jody Ganglov Kaufman from Cornell University who both research pest mitigation in urban settings and are part of the National Urban Rat Summit. Thanks so much to you both. Hopefully it'll be a fun summit. Thanks, Sean. Thank you. Thanks for listening. This is NYC Now from WMYC. Check us out for updates every weekday, three times a day, for the latest news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll be back this evening.