Springfield, OH Public Health Rules: Rodent Control (2026)

Chapter 1737 of the Springfield Codified Ordinances puts rat control on every owner and occupant in the city, not just food businesses. Section 1737.02 requires all business buildings, defined broadly in Section 1737.01 to include hotels, apartment buildings, tenement houses, rooming houses, stores, restaurants, warehouses, factories and their outhouses, sheds and barns, to be ratproofed, freed of rats or kept rat-free under regulations of the Commissioner of Public Health. When conditions inside or under a business building provide rat harborage or there is evidence of infestation, Section 1737.03 lets the Commissioner send the owner written notice ordering ratproofing, eradication, or both, with a deadline for compliance; Section 1737.04 gives occupants the identical notice and deadline.

Section 1737.05 makes owners keep ratproofed buildings ratproof and repair every break or leak in the ratproofing. Section 1737.06 requires any major construction, repair or remodeling of a building that stores, handles or sells food to leave the building ratproofed, and Section 1737.07 bans storing chicken, cow, pig or horse feed anywhere in the city except in rat-free or ratproof containers, compartments, rooms or buildings. Two sections reach beyond business buildings to every property. Section 1737.08 bans placing garbage or refuse rats could feed on, or small dead animals, in anything but a covered container built of material rats cannot gnaw through.

Section 1737.09 bans dumping dead animals or waste animal or vegetable matter on any premises, land or waterway. Section 1737.10 bans letting lumber, boxes, barrels, bottles, cans, containers or similar material accumulate, on any premises, improved or vacant, or on any open lot, street or alley in the city, if the accumulation affords rat harborage.