Village Voice blogger Elizabeth Dwoskin encourages readers to look at NYC’s new Environmental Health Tracking Portal, in a blog post entitled “Now You Can Be a Pest and Track Your Neighborhood’s Rats, Mice and Cockroaches.”
One thing the new portal does not allow you to do is track bed bug infestations. As Dwoskin notes:
Some areas of the Bronx, like the Crotona-Tremont neighborhood, have particularly severe roach problems. But Ivine Galarza, district manager of Bronx Community Board Six, tells the Voice that, actually, bedbugs seem to be a bigger problem. Can’t really keep track of them.
[Emphasis added.]
Well, you certainly can track them. Toronto did in 2003.
But the city is not doing so, or — to the degree they are tracking complaints — they’re not letting us see the results in the same way they are for mice, rats, and cockroaches.
We hope a bed bug infestation tracking program — including sharing the resulting information with the public as is done with these other urban pests — will be among the recommendations made by the New York City Bed Bug Advisory Board. And soon.
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