PLEASANT VIEW, Tenn. (WTVF) — A Pleasant View family has filed a lawsuit against the city after a drainage ditch was dug through their and their neighbor's backyards.
When Stacey Henthorn moved to Pleasant View in 2018, she thought she was getting the perfect home for her young family.
"We bought a house with a really beautiful yard to raise our kid and raise our family," she said.
But when they moved in, the home turned into a years-long headache and a battle with city leaders.
"It's two years of nonstop work and effort to figure out the situation," she explained.
The situation started as soon as they moved in. Henthorn said in between the time her family viewed the house and closed on it, city crews dug a ditch through her and her neighbor's yards.
"When we came to look at the property, none of this existed. "We instantly thought, 'oh my gosh we bought our first house and its worth nothing.'"
The ditch is designed to drain water that pools on the road, but Henthorn said since the ditch doesn't have any piping or rocks to protect the backyards, that water has now eroded her backyard and caused tens of thousands of dollars worth of problems.
"It's affecting our septic, our foundation, our HVAC, you name it, there's issues," Henthorn said.
Henthorn says city leaders initially said they would fix those issues, but in the last few months that has changed.
"They were repeatedly telling us that they were aware of the problem, that they were going to fix the problem," she said. "Now they're telling us that we're outside of our timeline for their responsibility and they have no responsibility for it."
The family has filed a lawsuit against the city, hoping to get Pleasant View to pay for the repairs.
NewsChannel 5 reached out to Pleasant View city leaders, who said they couldn't talk about the issue because it involved an ongoing lawsuit.
"I will say, I have heard from the homes involved and do not take lightly the issue," Pleasant View Mayor Bill Anderson, who took office in December, added.
