Omaha, NE Public Health Rules: Rodent Control (2026)

Omaha regulates rats and mice through the nuisance chapter. Section 18-3 declares that maintaining, using, placing, depositing, leaving or permitting to remain on public or private property any listed item, condition or action is a nuisance, and item (a) lists any condition which provides harborage for rats, mice, snakes and other vermin. The code states that the enumeration is not conclusive, limiting or restrictive, so an unlisted pest condition still counts if it meets the § 18-2 definition: a failure to perform a duty, or a permitted condition, that injures or endangers the comfort, repose, health or safety of others or is offensive to the senses. Section 18-4 makes it unlawful for any person to cause, permit, maintain or allow the creation of a nuisance, so permitting a harborage to remain is itself a violation, not only creating one.

The reach is wide. Section 18-1 applies the chapter to all property in the city and all property within three miles of the city limits. Neighboring items in the same § 18-3 list feed rodent problems: stagnant water on any lot (item h) and carcasses not disposed of, processed, or removed from the general public view (item e). Two later sections name rodents directly. Section 18-22(b) bars lot owners, other than the Douglas County Land Reutilization Commission, the Omaha Municipal Land Bank and the City, from maintaining brush, vines, woody volunteers or other nuisance vegetation that offers vector or rodent harborage. Section 18-122(e) requires compost bins to be turned for aeration so they do not attract or harbor rodents, and § 18-122(f) keeps bins out of front and side yards, at least five feet from any property line and at least 30 feet from a principal structure on an abutting property.

Enforcement runs through written notice. Under § 18-6 the planning director, the chief of police, the parks, recreation, and public property director, other officers designated by the mayor, and the health director of the county health department must take all measures necessary to abate nuisances on public and private property. Section 18-8 requires written notice to the owner or occupant, and § 18-9 requires that notice to order abatement, describe the nuisance and its location, state the acts needed to abate it, and explain the procedure for requesting a hearing.