A rat infestation inside two Calgary paper and waste recycling facilities is still active, after being discovered almost two years ago.
The rats are living inside two southeast recycling facilities: Capital Paper Recycling and Cascades Recovery+. The facilities process Calgary’s recycling.
“Not everybody follows the strict rules of what goes into a blue box. And so, you know, food ends up in them as well. So, you know, it's a constant source of food for them,” Karen Wickerson, with the Alberta Rat Control Program said.
The City of Calgary is also monitoring the situation at the recycling facilities.
“There are clear plans in place that each business must follow to address this concern and considerable improvements are being made. These businesses will continue to be monitored until this issue is fully resolved,” City of Calgary Bylaw said in a statement.
Brendan Campbell of Abell Pest Control is not working on the current infestation but has experience dealing with rats. He said they are hard to eliminate.
“It's not a quick, quick thing at all,” he said.
“It can be quite difficult to say, obviously, you know, if we have one first sighting, you know, that's the time where we want to get right involved, we want to nip it in the bud. Right? Stop it so they can, you know, not have to produce or sorry, produce any further generations.”
The province maintains the infestation is contained but said evidence of rats is observed during weekly visits. The bait stations put out for the rats have been fed on.
“With the constant food source, and then now with the cold weather as well, you know, they really have no reason to want to leave the facility, which is which is good,” Wickerson said.
Alberta worries about two kinds of rats: roof rats and Norway rats. The rats discovered in Calgary are Norway rats.
A spokesperson for Cascades Recovery+ said no employee has seen an actual rat in the facility for over two months and that the company is working closely with a pest control contractor to resolve the issue.
While the city and the province said the rats likely arrived on the back of trucks, Cascades Recovery+ noted that every truck coming in and out of the facility comes from somewhere in southern Alberta.
On the province's Rat Control Program website, it says, "Albertans have enjoyed living without the menace of rats since 1950 when the Rat Control Program was established.
"Alberta's rat-free status means there is no resident population of rats and they are not allowed to establish themselves.
"It does not mean we never get rats. Small infestations occasionally occur, but when found, the rats are isolated and eradicated through proven control methods."
With files from CTV News Calgary’s Damien Wood
