It's a sight no one wants to see or smell.
"When the sun starts shining it's gonna start smelling," said tenant William Vaughn.
Vaughn says raw sewage has been backing up inside the Greenvile home he rents and outside onto the property for more than a month.
"We have to do this all the time," said Vaughn as he poured water into the toilet to flush it.
He says he also has to bleach his bathtub each time the sewage comes up the pipes.
"It smells so bad my neighbors come to me and ask me can I do something about it," said Vaughn. "I look at them like I can't do nothing about it I'm trying to get ahold of my landlord."
Vaughn says there's no phone number for his landlord on the lease, or in the phonebook, only an address that leads you to a UPS store in Greenville. And he says the two numbers listed as emergency contacts are useless. We tried them ourselves. One is not a working number and the other led us to a man who says he hasn't worked for the landlord in two years.
So we looked up the property owner on Greenville County's website, John Douglas, and went to his home. We left a note and hours later a plumber was at their door.
"When I saw them I was pretty happy," said Vaughn.
A relative of the landlord told us they didn't even know about the problem until they saw our note. She went on to say the landlord was very ill but assured us the problem would be solved.
"You all did a really good job," said Vaughn. "I'm very proud of what you all did."
We received a call from a relative of the landlord late Monday who told us the only letter they received from the tenant was about a leaky toilet.
We also asked the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control why they didn't get involved in this case. They told us it was a landlord-tenant issue and it was the responsibility of the owner to clean up the spill since it began on the property. They say if you can't get help you are urged to go to your local magistrate's office.
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