It took a few phone calls from local reporters to get the city of Tampa, Florida, to clean up 20,000 gallons of raw sewage emptied into the street earlier this month.

The city had hired Seminole Septic to restore some sewer lines, but a truck driver made the mistake of dumping four truckloads of waste into the wrong manhole. There were a pair of manholes in the area — one marked “sanitary sewer” that travels to a wastewater treatment plant, and another feeding into a ditch that flows into Tampa Bay.

The smell, according to some on Westshore Boulevard, was unbearable. “The smell was incredible,” citizen Wayne Tankersley told News Channel 8 On Your Side. “The trucks were showing up one after another pumping sewage into the street.”

A business owner in the area called the city of Tampa to address the issue, but claims workers never came. So they called 8 On Your Side, and reporters called the city until they dispatched a cleanup crew.

Eric Weiss, director of the Tampa Wastewater Department, said he’d also investigate how the mistake could have occurred.

Source: News Channel 8 On Your Side