Berkeley, CA Public Health Rules: Rodent Control (2026)

Chapter 11.32 adopts the state's rodent and pest abatement law, Health and Safety Code Sections 1800 through 1813, and layers Berkeley's own maintenance duties on top of it under Section 11.32.010. Section 11.32.020 defines rodentproofing as permanent construction, such as a continuous masonry foundation of the size and depth the building code requires, that closes every opening a rodent could use to enter from the ground, by climbing, or by burrowing, and defines rodent harborage as any condition that shelters rodents or favors their breeding. Section 11.32.030 then makes the duty absolute: all buildings and structures shall be rodentproofed and maintained in a rodent-proof and rodent-free condition.

Related sections spell out what that duty requires in practice. Section 11.32.040 bars using any building infested with rodents, or likely to become infested in the chief of environmental health's opinion, to manufacture, store, display or serve food, and requires food kept in rodent-free, rat-proofed containers. Section 11.32.050 makes it unlawful to maintain any building, structure, vehicle or place so that rodents or other vermin can breed there. Section 11.32.070 requires stored lumber, boxes, paper, rags or dense vegetation that could shelter rodents to sit on open racks raised at least eighteen inches off the ground, evenly piled, unless the chief approves another method. Where the chief of environmental health finds a rodent harborage, Section 11.32.060 lets them serve written notice ordering the owner or occupant to rodentproof within a reasonable time, and Section 11.32.080 bars removing existing rodentproofing, or opening a new gap in a building, without resealing it. Section 11.32.100 requires continuous extermination on top of rodentproofing wherever a property is subject to repeated infestation, and Section 11.32.110 extends the same anti-rodent duty to every public and private dock and wharf in the City.