WORCESTER – Wherever there is dense urban living, there’s likely to be rats scurrying about. That’s the case in big cities and midsize ones like Worcester, where rats are not only a nuisance but also spread diseases.
Lee Hall, Worcester’s director of housing and health inspections, has worked for the city for nearly 30 years. She has a deep institutional knowledge about the decades of local efforts to fight the city’s rat problem.
What it takes, said Hall, is everyone working together. That means city inspections to identify problem areas and educating the public about steps it can take, like properly bagging up trash, to keep rat numbers in check. Enforcement, including fines for those who don’t comply with control efforts, is also important.
Worcester has been doing those things for years, said Hall, but she acknowledged that you’re never going to eliminate every rat. Especially in a city with a growing population that generates more rubbish and other conditions for rats to multiply.
That may be true, but Worcester is trying something it’s never done before to combat these critters. It’s high-tech traps, and roughly 50 are now placed around the city to monitor rodent activity.
Each is the size of a lunchbox, and infrared sensors electronically display how many rats are going in and out of the containers. The focus here is data collection to help Worcester develop a plan of attack to more effectively target and eliminate the vermin.
“I definitely think we’re putting the city of Worcester in a positive direction for the rodent control issues that we have,” said Nicholas Antanavica, Worcester’s commissioner of inspectional services.
Antanavica started his job in May, so he’s still getting a handle on the rat landscape in Worcester. He was formerly Somerville’s director of inspectional services where a similar high-tech data collection project happened under his watch to deal with that city’s rat challenge.
His early assessment is that Worcester’s rodent issues aren’t as significant as those in denser urban communities in Eastern Massachusetts.
Antanavica’s team is trying to reinvigorate the city’s rodent control program that had “fallen off a little bit,” so the 21st-century boxes are in play. Data collection is the emphasis for now, and that’s why the traps have been used on an experimental basis since August.
These are Mouse iQ traps, but don’t let the name fool you, because they’re big enough to hold mice and rats. Since cold weather is creeping in that normally signals fewer rodents moving about, the experimental program will pause at the end of November and likely resume in March.
Antanavica noted that rodent capture and extermination will likely be part of the experimental program in the spring. The city is studying nonpoisonous baits and staying clear of rodenticide poisons that are second-generation anticoagulants that can kill birds and other animals after they eat the rodents that feasted on the rodenticide.
Antanavica compared the iQ traps to an AirTag sensor used to locate lost luggage. Worcester’s field inspectors connect with the boxes via a mobile application. Once they’re within 100 feet of a box, they can see how many times rodents have traveled through them.
This is valuable information, Antanavica said, because it will help the city pinpoint areas where rodent control needs to be targeted.
So far the boxes have identified heavy rodent activity at the West Boylston pump station and in the areas of Holden Street, Elm Park and Glennie Street. A moderate level was detected in the Shore Drive area and light activity in the Forest Grove and Institute Park neighborhoods. Antanavica didn’t respond to a request for numbers in each of those areas.
Eventually, Antanavica would like to see real-time data on the city’s website so the public knows how many rodents are running about and where they’re located.
If Somerville is a guide, the experimental use of high-tech boxes could have positive results in Worcester.
“The data collected has been invaluable,” said Colin Zeigler, Somerville’s environmental health manager. Like Worcester, Somerville’s goal was data collection to develop better solutions. Fifty boxes captured 1,300 rodents from 2022 to 2023 at a cost of $40,000 for supplies and services. The program continues today with a total of 60 boxes, costing $60,000 annually.
Somerville found that boxes next to trash dumpsters supplied the best data, because that’s where the most rodents are feeding in this city of 80,000. Officials are working with the dumpster property owners to reduce rat numbers.
Enforcement is part of the rat-busting equation in Somerville. Fines for property owners who don’t mitigate their rodent issues range from a warning for a first offense to $300 per infraction. State lawmakers rejected Somerville’s home rule petition request to increase fines beyond the $300 limit.
In Worcester, property owners are given 72 hours to hire an exterminator after the city identifies and shares corrective steps. Local nuisance ordinances and the state sanitary code give Worcester the authority to demand action if nothing is done after 72 hours. That could mean a $50 ticket for a first offense, $100 for a second, $200 for a third and $300 for a fourth and each subsequent violation.
Local and state regulations also give Worcester the authority to clean, remove and repair issues that attract mice and rats and directly bill the owner to recoup the costs or place a lien on the property. A lien happens when an owner doesn’t respond to repeated city requests to fix the issues. Hall called it “clean and lien.”
As for the number of complaints about rats in Worcester, Hall’s figures indicated 430 over a three-year period from Nov. 21, 2022 to Nov. 21, 2025. She cautioned it’s not an exact number, and her preliminary review showed the majority of complaints originated from low-income neighborhoods, including Dorchester, Vernon Hill, Green Island, Beacon/Brightly, Piedmont, Chandler Business District, South Worcester and University Park.
Besides the experimental program featuring high-tech boxes, Hall said Worcester wants to restart a program for licensed applicators to put bait inside city sewers to kill rodents. That effort has been dormant since 2005, according to Hall, largely because it wasn’t funded due to various political and economic forces. Plus, the city didn’t have anyone licensed to do the job.
Hall noted the effort has been partially revived due to a $50,000 infusion from City Manager Eric D. Batista’s budget. Currently, two teams with three workers each are baiting sewers and inspecitng them on weekends. More staff is need to make it a full-time operation.
In addition, Hall feels there’s a need for an education program in the upper elementary grades so students share information with their parents about ways to curb rodent numbers on their properties.
Meanwhile in Providence, with a population not much smaller than Worcester’s, officials are using ContraPest in a sterilization baiting program to control rodents in some neighborhoods, according to Anthony Vega, a city spokesman. The product is not an anticoagulant, so it poses no harm to wildlife who feed on the rodents.
Even if rodent-fighting teams in Somerville and Worcester get all the high-tech gadgets they need, officials in both cities acknowledge it won’t solve the problem without community buy-in.
Zeigler is calling for a cultural mentality around cleanliness. People have to manage their properties, keep them neat and clean, and don’t accept conditions that attract rats. As he sees it, education on these points comes first and then enforcement.
Antanavica agrees that taking pride in clean neighborhoods and investing in community education about why it’s important to achieve that cleanliness is vital to keeping rodent numbers down.
“The biggest thing is education and we need the participation of the community,” said Antanavica. “It’s about making sure all residents know to keep areas cleared and maintain their yards and trash. It goes a long way to helping reduce the rodent issues.”
Contact Henry Schwan at henry.schwan@telegram.com. Follow him on X: @henrytelegram.