Dupont Circle neighborhood residents are worried that the rats that they chased off three years ago are creeping back and dining on overstuffed restaurant trash bins.
Department of Health officials say they’ll conduct more inspections, set up traps and again teach businesses and landlords to properly store trash and to close the lids of trash containers.
The area has new owners, new employees, new pest control companies — and new rats.
“Its very fluid. We can’t kill them fast enough if there is so much food available,” said Peggy Keller, chief of the bureau of community hygiene.
Residents say the businesses that piled their trash three years ago are the same ones that are doing it today.
The problem, they said, is that the cost to haul the trash is determined by the size of the trash container, so the businesses rent trash containers that are too small.
Neighbors said they believe that the District could issue more tickets to violators.
Over the years, the rats have been a reoccurring concern in the posh part of town where dozens of hip clubs and restaurants sit near million-dollar homes and foreign embassies.
The alley behind the east side of 17th Street NW between Church and P streets had been dubbed Grease Alley because of the gunk that flowed down the street.
A documentarian who shot a movie about rats in American cities focused on group that lived around Willard and Florida Avenue. One town house on 17th Street NW had so many rats that they chased a city inspector out of the building.
“When therats scare the health inspector, you know you have a rat problem,” said resident Phil Carney.
Ten years ago, Carney started the neighborhood “Rat Patrol” because he was concerned about the large number of rats burrowed in the soccer fields where children played at Stead Recreation Ballpark.
The rat patrol braved back alleys to shoot photos of overflowing dumpsters, sometimes with as many as 10 rats gathered in one spot. They e-mailed the photos to city leaders and health officials, and the District responded.
The number of rat burrows spotted at Stead was reduced from 80 a week to three, but with the rodents moving back in, Carney is taking pictures again.
