TOLEDO, Ohio — Imagine raw sewage leaking into your basement every time you flush the toilet.
A Toledo man named Rick Mish said it's been happening for the past 20 years and he claims it's the city's fault.
"I've tried everything in my power over the years to rectify this and I can't do it," Mish said.
For two decades, the pipes at his home on Manhattan Boulevard have endlessly backed up.
"If we put any paper in there at all, I got to call the jetter every three months," Mish said. "We haven't been putting any paper in there, so we haven't had to call him for a year."
Now, they have to collect their used toilet paper in containers and dispose of it separately, all to avoid another leaking mess.
Mish told WTOL 11 that it's made him miserable and he said he can pinpoint when it all started back to a city construction project in his back alley in 2004.
"There was all this construction equipment here and a backhoe," he said. "After they dug it up, I've had to have a guy come out from The Point every four months and jet my line."
Plumbers took cameras to the pipes and came back with the diagnosis that the construction had rattled a tile out of place, catching all of his sewage and causing the blockages.
Hoping it could be an easy fix, Mish first tried reaching back out to the city.
"They just put up orange barrels and say 'It's flowing forward, the water is flowing forward, it's on your side of the property line you so have to pay to have it fixed,'" he said.
But the price tag to fix the pipes of $10,000 is well outside the budget of his limited income. So instead, all he can afford to do is have plumbers come out to the house and snake the line again and again, year after year.
"I have $8,000 in receipts," Mish said as he showed a pile of them to WTOL 11.
He said he's even tried calling the mayor personally.
"He won't return my calls," Mish said. "I've called him half a dozen times in the last two to three years, he won't call."
Now he's turned to WTOL 11, hoping someone will hear his struggles and have a way to help.
"I wanted to prove I've tried to do everything I could possibly do on my own, and I've run into a brick wall," Mish said.
WTOL 11 reached out to the city's utility department to get their side of the story and a member of their communications team said that they're currently looking into the details of the case.
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