Cancer Patient in Hollygrove Says Sewage Pit Outside Home Sat Unfixed for Months

A hole outside Hilda Frank's Fig Street home in Hollygrove has been filled with sewage for months, and Frank says the smell has become unbearable enough that she now keeps her four-year-old grandchild inside rather than let him breathe it in. Frank, who is undergoing chemotherapy as a breast cancer patient, said the ordeal began in early June and has left her fearing that the standing waste outside her door could make her sick.

Frank told WVUE Fox 8 that the substance pooling in the hole is sewage and waste, and that water collecting there causes the street to flood whenever it rains. She and her neighbors have called the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans multiple times, she said, and at one point endured backed-up toilets inside their own homes. According to the station's report, crews dug the hole after finding a broken sewage pipe underground, and workers told Frank they would return within a few weeks to fix the pipe and fill it back in. That return never came, per the same account, and the smell resurfaced each time the hole filled back up again after SWBNO occasionally drained it.

A Temporary Fix That Kept Failing

SWBNO crews did install a temporary relief point meant to safely redirect the sewage and protect Frank's household plumbing while a permanent repair was scheduled, the utility said in a statement to the outlet. The agency said that fix prevented sewage from backing up into her home, but it did not stop the hole outside from refilling or the odor from returning. Neighbor Hayden Robbins, who lives across the street from Frank, said residents in the area often have to file multiple complaints or calls before the utility addresses a problem, and he said the city needs to fix the issue.

In its statement, SWBNO said parts needed for the repair were not readily available when the temporary relief point was first installed, but that the necessary parts are now available. The utility said it takes reports like Frank's seriously, that it recognizes the disruption the delay has caused her, and that it is working to get an update on the situation. SWBNO also said it is committed to resolving the problem as quickly as possible and told the station that crews intended to make repairs immediately, with work now expected to happen this weekend.

One Hole, Thousands of Open Orders

The delay on Fig Street is not an isolated case. As of August 2026, SWBNO was carrying a citywide backlog of roughly 3,000 open work orders, according to WWL-TV, with the agency aiming to whittle that number down to 1,000 by the end of the year. It is also not the first prolonged sewer complaint out of Hollygrove: in August 2024, residents on another street in the neighborhood endured a two-week gushing manhole leak that sank the asphalt beneath it, a period during which SWBNO officials said non-emergency work orders were taking up to four weeks to resolve.

Hollygrove itself sits on drained swampland developed in the 1920s, bounded by Palmetto Street, Earhart Boulevard, Leonidas Street, and the Jefferson Parish line, a geography Hoodline has previously detailed. That low-lying layout has long made the area prone to drainage trouble, and it now sits alongside a broader pattern Hoodline has tracked citywide, including choked drains in Mid-City and a ruptured sewer main in the Industrial Canal that has further strained repair crews.

Federal Mandates and Political Pressure Collide

SWBNO has operated under a federal consent decree with the EPA and Department of Justice since 1998, last modified in 2014, requiring the utility to make comprehensive repairs to reduce raw sewer overflows across New Orleans. To help fund that work, the agency secured a $275 million federal loan in November 2021, and Fitch Ratings reported in September 2025 that major underground construction across nine drainage basins was targeted for completion in late 2025. SWBNO now manages drinking water, wastewater, and drainage systems for roughly 360,000 Orleans Parish residents, according to the agency.

The utility has also faced mounting political scrutiny. In March 2026, New Orleans Chief Administrative Officer Joe Giarrusso formally asked SWBNO to return $14 million in unused city bond funds to help stabilize the city's finances, per WWL-TV. The following month, the Louisiana House of Representatives passed House Bill 1243 in an 89-8 vote, a measure Hoodline reported would shift budget and hiring oversight from SWBNO to the New Orleans City Council. Randy Hayman has led SWBNO as executive director since July 2025, after Ghassan Korban's resignation, while career engineer Kaitlin Tymrak was confirmed in June 2026 as general superintendent, becoming the first woman to direct the utility's day-to-day water, wastewater, and drainage operations, as Hoodline has reported.

For now, Frank is left waiting to see whether this weekend's promised repair finally closes the hole outside her home for good. She said she fears her health could decline the longer the standing sewage and its smell remain just outside her door.