As more restaurants are being closed as the city's health department tries to improve its inspection procedures, questions remain.
First: As many of rodent problems are due to garbage pickup issues, will the city allow commercial businesses to have garbage disposals? Though residents are now allowed to have garbage disposals (thanks to Mayor Giuliani), business still aren't. The NY Sun reports that restaurant groups, like the National Restaurant Association and the Latino Restaurant Association, believe that many problems could be "mitigated," if not solved outright with disposals. But the NY Department of Environmental Protection has been against commercial garbage disposals, because "it would increase the amount of nitrogen in the sewer system and become an environmental hazard."
Another question is how many more restaurants will be closed by the Health Department? Slice has a photograph of the sign outside of John's on Bleecker Street, which was closed last week: "It seems that after 70 YEARS in business they have decided that we need a sink CLOSER TO the Pizza making area, have PROPER lids on our RESTROOM GARBAGE CANS, seal airtight, every possible crack and hole in our 150 year old basement.... and MOST IMPORTANTLY keep our basement door closed...." Pizza lovers are outraged, and we imagine tourists were clutching their cameras in disappointment.
Our question is: Given that the city is very slow to respond to rodent problems - and many rodent experts admit you can't completely get rid of rats - what are restaurants to do? We guess all future restaurants will have to have a hefty "getting-rid-of-rodents" line item in the budget.
And how many school cafeterias will be closed? We imagine there are some health code violation there!
