O to Be a Dog in Paris!(mayor Yves Contassot tackles city's legendary canine poo problem)(Brief Article)

When Yves Contassot ran in the Paris municipal elections a few months ago, one especially pungent issue dogged him. Other politicians turned up their noses. But voters sensed this Green Party candidate would be different. "Do you have the courage?" they would ask, emphasizing that last word. "Do you have the courage to take on... dog poop?"

Yes, Contassot replied. And now as deputy mayor of the City of Light, he's set out to prove it. Many Parisians don't realize what's coming, how lives and lifestyles will soon be transformed. But with the new year, a new era dawns for Paris and its famously pampered pooches.

Whether Yorkie, poodle or Shar-Pei, it's out with the old and in with the new. No longer will the city's four-footed friends be permitted to poop wherever they please. Nor will it be enough to "curb" your dog, directing business to the street instead of the sidewalk. Come January, owners will have to clean up after their pets. If they don't, they'll pay fines up to several hundred dollars--just like Londoners and New Yorkers.

A social tempest is expected. Nothing of this sort has ever been done along the banks of the Seine. It goes against tradition. In past decades, whenever the odiferous issue came up, Contassot explains, French politicians deferred to the dogs. Why? Because owners were voters, and why needlessly offend? Besides, picking up poop is so, well, un-French. Brigitte Bardot, the former sex kitten turned animal- rights activist, has fired off an early salvo in the coming doo-doo wars. The new anti-excrement campaign, she complained to city officials, risks "sharpening the hatreds" between man and beast!

Municipal authorities have reason on their side. Each year, they say, more than 600 people slip on the city's doggy-slicked streets and land in the hospital. And as any sole-scraping tourist can tell you, that's just the beginning. Paris's quarter of a million dogs produce 16 metric tons of excrement daily--and the city spends more than 11 million euro a year keeping that load from burying its cafe-lined boulevards.

Once upon a time the solution to this fecal fecundity was shovels. Nowadays the job is done by battalions of street sweepers and a fleet of 70-odd motorcycles with special merde-sucking vacuums. Since ...