War on rats gets ugly as hundreds of ‘eyesore' Empire Bins gobble up parking spaces in Harlem
West Harlem has become the first neighborhood in the United States to have all of its trash containerized in order to squash uptown rats' curbside trash feasts, City Hall officials said Monday – but the hundreds of UFO-like 'Empire Bins' are now permanently taking some coveted parking spots, The Post has learned.
The latest cohort of European-style bins, which are mandatory for all residential properties with more than 30 units, were installed over the weekend — and have gobbled up about 4% of parking spaces in the neighborhood overnight, a city sanitation department rep told The Post.
'It takes up parking spots that were already hard to find,' said Harlem resident Erica Lamont, who claims she circled the blocks of Broadway and West 149th Street for a half-hour on Tuesday morning.
'The bins are the size of small cars and when you put two and three on a residential street, you are ultimately forcing people to force blocks away,' Lamont, 46, said.
'It's not placed in no standing or truck loading zones – they are placed in the few actual parking spots that residents could get,' said Michelle R., a 40-year-old dog sitter in the neighborhood. 'I like the garbage cans, but I feel bad for the people that normally park their cars there.'
Other locals, like Harlem resident David Jones, simply blasted the bizarre look of the gargantuan containers.
'It's an eyesore,' said Jones, 40. 'It's right there in front of your face. I'm neutral. If it does the job then let's applaud it — If it doesn't, then let's get rid of them and come up with something else.'
Some locals previously told The Post the massive receptacles clash with the neighborhood's aesthetic, even though they may be needed to scare away rats.
The pilot program, which spans Manhattan's Community Board 9, includes 1,100 on-street containers for about 29,000 residents living in properties with over 30 units, as well as about half of properties with 10 to 30 units that opted to use the bins.
The locked bins are accessible to building staff and waste managers via 'access cards,' and have been serviced by automated side-loading trucks since Monday.
'Rat sightings in NYC are down six months in a row,' a DSNY rep told The Post. 'This is the exact same period that residential bin requirements have been in effect. Containerization WORKS, and there is no reason that other cities can have it and New York can't.'
But while citywide rat sightings are down, Manhattan's Community Board 9 has seen a 7.8% jump in rat sightings compared to this time last year, according to a Post analysis of 311 data.
Still, City Hall hopes the new bins will end the curbside rat buffet fueled by garbage bags lingering on residential streets — which uptown residents say have made it nearly impossible to walk on some streets at night.
'When there's trash on the sidewalk, there's rats—plain and simple. And yet for years, City Hall acted like trash cans were some sort of sci-fi/fantasy invention,' said Council Member Shaun Abreu, Chair of the Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management.
'Now with full containerization in West Harlem and Morningside Heights, we've got clean bins, no more sidewalk piles, and fewer rats. We fought like hell to make this happen, and now we're proving it works.'
Harlem resident Rick M. said he hopes the new containers are effective as residents have historically had to move quickly past piles of street side trash 'because you don't know what may run out.
'I've seen rats run from one big pile to another so it's nice to not have to walk by piles of trash,' the 30-year-old said.
'The rat problem was so bad here that humans couldn't be living here — they'd be attacking you right here,' lifelong Harlem resident Shanice Day told The Post at Morningside Avenue and 124th Street.
Day, 39, recalls rats as big as cats 'like Master Splinter rats from Ninja Turtles' that would chew wires off people's cars — and attributes the Empire Bins to a rapid decrease in rodent sightings.
'What I can honestly say is we are almost rat free,' she added. 'If people are upset about the bins they're crazy, because they are a big help.'
But Harlem resident Wise Grant, 64, warns the containers are only as effective as those who use them.
'It slows them down but it's not a way to get rid of them,' the retired voting machine technician said. 'It's up to the individual people. People throw food on the floor and it feeds them.'
'That's what people do on the streets. They don't care … They have to care about where they live.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
2 days ago
- New York Post
Who's really getting stomped? Hopes of victory in the lantern fly war dashed as the invasive bug makes a comeback
Turns out the lantern flies are the ones crushing it. The Big Apple apparently claimed a premature victory in the war against the pesky bug last year — with officials now admitting the infamous 'Stomp Out' campaign that asked people to step the flies failed and the invasive insects are making a comeback. 'The really long list of plants that it's able to feed on, the ability to move in multiple life stages fairly significant distances and just the sheer population numbers of it really probably from day one signaled that this was a very challenging battle,' Chris Logue, the director of the state Division of Plants at the Department of Agriculture and Markets, told The Post. No amount of stomping, equishing or insecticide will vanquish lantern flies, according to state officials. Christopher Sadowski 'We probably, going into the future, are going to continue to have spotted lanternfly. It's probably going to continue to expand its range.' No amount of stomping, equishing or insecticide will vanquish the species, he explained, an insight he first shared this week with Gothamist. The mission has shifted to managing their exploding populations — a major change from the all-out war New York declared on the invasive bug back in 2023 when civilians were urged to take up arms by ruthlessly stomping the critters on sight. The movement was instantly popular — even young children took to the streets with heavy shoes on foot and bottles of vinegar on hand to help eradicate the lantern flies. 'We're not going to discourage people from stamping them if that's something they wish to continue doing,' said Logue. Christopher Sadowski As of today, the invasive critters have been detected in 26 of New York's 62 counties, but state officials have concentrated their eradication efforts in northwestern areas where lantern flies pose an existential threat to grape farms and wineries. And the bugs are living up to five months longer than they did when they first arrived, according to an NYU study published in December. Ags and Market officials recently received their first report of an adult lantern fly out of the Big Apple — which is up to a full month earlier than they were previously expected to transition into adulthood, Logue said. Just ten months ago, pest management experts at Cornell University celebrated a premature victory, telling The Post at the time that there were significantly fewer lantern flies across the city thanks to Operation Squish. 'We're likely reducing the population,' one Cornell expert said last September. But the apparent drop is now looking like just part of the ebb and flow of lantern fly populations, Logue said — the bugs feast on plants until they deplete them and then move onto another area where the bounty is plentiful. The overall population has continued to expand, reaching as far as 18 states. To combat the New York pests, officials routinely treat Tree of Heavens and other host plants that lantern flies latch onto in counties north and west of Albany, but have left the Big Apple alone because it doesn't have crops at risk of decimation. 'We aren't doing treatment in the city. We have a couple of locations upstate that are high consequence from the standpoint of proximity to vineyards that may have some treatments done, but we aren't doing any of that type of work down in the city,' he said. That's not to say civilians shouldn't try to eradicate lantern flies on their own accord, but the stomping method isn't as dire as it may have once been. Now, civilians should concentrate on eliminating egg masses in the fall, and checking to see that they're not unknowingly carrying the avid travelers during road trips. The good news is that some birds and bats are starting to munch on lantern flies, which preivously had no natural predators. Ags and Markets also urge New Yorkers who live north and west of Albany to report lantern flies so the state department can zero in on affected areas. 'We're not going to discourage people from stamping them if that's something they wish to continue doing,' said Logue.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Thousands of leather shoes, bags and sword scabbards discovered during dig in medieval harbor in Norway
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. While excavating near an old harbor in Oslo, archaeologists have uncovered thousands of pieces of preserved, waterlogged leather that are nearly 700 years old. The bags, purses, shoes and sword scabbards — all dated to around the 13th and 14th centuries — are revealing new information about everyday life in medieval Norway. This past winter and spring, archaeologists with the Norwegian Maritime Museum and the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research began digging at a site called D2 ahead of the planned construction of the Bjørvika School, a new primary and secondary school in Oslo. In medieval times, the dig area was open water in the harbor at the mouth of the Alna River. But in the 19th century, the area was filled in to create more land — which ended up preserving the discarded items there and creating an archaeological treasure trove of leather goods. Artifacts likely wound up in the harbor for various reasons. Traders lost goods they were transferring, children dropped bowls of porridge, and people tossed away their old shoes. Light items made of wood and leather may have been chucked further upstream and then floated down the river and settled in the harbor. Wet clay at the old harbor has preserved myriad leather artifacts, which don't decompose in the oxygen-free environment. So far, the archaeologists have discovered more than 200 shoes. "We wouldn't be surprised if we reach well over 1,000 before we finish going through everything we found," they wrote in a translated blog post. Many of the old shoes show signs of wear, suggesting they were purposefully pitched in the past. One shoe was quite large, corresponding to a men's U.S. size 13 or a 47 in European sizing. Some had decorations cut into the leather, but most were simple, hand-sewn shoes — a leather sole and plain leather upper boot. Related: 8 ancient Roman shoes of 'exceptional size' discovered at Roman fort near Hadrian's Wall "When we hold one of these shoes in our hands today, it is like being close to the person who walked in it," the researchers wrote. "It is like a footprint from the Middle Ages: concrete proof that a person has lived, walked and had a life in this city." In addition to shoes, archaeologists have uncovered 15 medieval bags and purses from the Bjørvika School dig. Most of these bags were small enough to be worn on a belt and hidden under a tunic. Both women and men used bags as "practical accessories" in a time before pockets were sewn into clothing, the researchers wrote in a translated blog post. "Bags contained what you needed during the day," the researchers wrote. This might have included coins, a comb, a needle and thread, or even a small cross or amulet. "Medieval people needed to carry things around, just like us," they wrote, and the leather bags "give us insight into how people organized their everyday lives — and what they valued." Almost everyone in the Middle Ages carried around knives attached to their belts, the researchers wrote in a blog post. Archaeologists have also found the remains of several protective leather sheaths at the Bjørvika School site. RELATED STORIES —Remains of 14th-century gauntlet discovered in Oslo's medieval harbor —'Outstanding' 2,200-year-old child's shoe discovered deep underground in Austrian mine —2,700-year-old leather saddle found in woman's tomb in China is oldest on record One of the last things archaeologists excavated at the site this spring was the skeleton of a dog. In a blog post, the researchers noted that most of the more than 3,000 bones they recovered were from food trash, but the partially complete skeleton of a medium-size dog was a surprise. "The bones show no obvious signs of wear, disease or dismemberment," they wrote, "but are well-fused together, meaning the dog had a good life with access to food and probably cuddles." While excavation of the archaeological material is now complete, the researchers have just begun studying the loads of finds they've recovered, hoping to gain new insight into medieval Oslo. Solve the daily Crossword
Business Insider
2 days ago
- Business Insider
Milk Price
Loading.. Date Open Close Daily High Daily Low Price change over selected period: 0% 0 In the Milk Law milk is defined as 'the product obtained from the regular milking of the udder and mixed thoroughly'. If the milk originates from other mammals then the milk producing animal must be named in European trade, such as sheep or goat milk. The raw milk originating from the animals must first be processed by milk processing establishments, also known as dairies, before the product is sold to consumers. (read more) Business Insider 5 hrs ago Business Insider 6 hrs ago Business Insider 6 hrs ago Business Insider 07/15/25
