The federal government wasn’t always silent on rats. From 1969 to 1982, the Center for Disease Control awarded cities grants under what was known as the Urban Rat Control program, championed by then-President Lyndon Johnson.
The program started small, servicing only 19 communities across the country, but eventually grew to serve 65 communities with an annual budget of $13 million, which was matched by state and local governments. While the program did experience some hiccups, it was widely considered successful. Quoting the CDC, the Associated Press reported in 1982: “As a result of the efforts, 7.7 million people now live in rat-free, environmentally improved neighborhoods.”
But President Ronald Reagan eliminated the program, saying the rat problem should be dealt with by individual states. That irked former CDC Director of Environmental Health William Houk, who told United Press International at the time that the program was “one of the more worthwhile projects of the federal government.” Reagan’s decision to cut it, Houk said, “is a classic example of the government doing something with the people instead of for them.”
Rat-plagued cities are now left to their own devices. And they’re not exactly doing a great job. In part, that’s because rats are elusive. As Linda Poon wrote this year for CityLab, “no one really knows how many rats there are. Not in New York City, nor Washington, D.C., nor Chicago—all three of which rank among the most rodent-infested cities in the U.S.” Rats in these urban areas depend on humans for food and shelter, meaning their environment only improves as more and more humans cram into cities with every passing year. And as researchers noted in the Journal of Urban Ecology this year, rats rapidly evolve to resist poisons, the most commonly known form of extermination.
Still, the biggest roadblock, Corrigan said, is that rat eradication programs are just plain underfunded. “It’s been my experience watching cities that people are not willing to pay what it takes to get rid of all the rats affecting a property or a building,” he said. And even when cities are willing to pony up, it’s still not enough. Even in the best-case scenario, New York City’s staggeringly large $32 million program to kill rodents would reduce rat populations in the city’s most infested areas only by 70 percent.
Federal funding could help to close the gap. Officials at the CDC may not be paying much attention now, but they should be, if only because the public health cost of rat infestations has never been fully studied. It’s hard to quantify just how much money rats are costing health systems, Corrigan said, because most people sickened by rats have flu-like symptoms, and many don’t know they’ve been exposed to a rat.
Public health is not just a local issue, and neither is climate change. Researchers admit that it’s extremely difficult to study rats, but many are confident that if temperatures continue to rise, rat populations—and the problems that come with them—will continue to grow. “I personally feel there is a connection with climate change, just because of logic and the biology of rats’ reproductive cycle,” Corrigan said. “Global climate change fits into this discussion in some measurement. How much, I’m just not sure.”
But the Trump administration doesn’t need to accept that climate change will make rodent infestations worse to step in and save the cities from their rats. As the administration has eliminated federal programs to fight climate change, cities have stepped up, aggressively funding their own efforts to slow carbon dioxide emissions. Cities are already fighting battles that shouldn’t be only theirs to fight. The least the federal government could do is chip in for some rat control.
Maybe the best way to get Trump’s attention and sell him on reviving the Urban Rat Control grant program is to stress that there is glory to be had, and for relatively cheap. “Rats are very incredible, wildly intelligent mammals, and human beings keep going around trying to exterminate [them] as if it’s the opposite,” Corrigan said. “These cities are up against one of the most incredible mammals on the planet, which only stand to increase in number.” For a mere $13 million (plus inflation), Trump could stop the ratpocalypse before it begins.
Article Appeared @https://newrepublic.com/article/144392/america-verge-ratpocalypse