Imagine living in a home tainted with raw sewage. That's exactly the position one Willard family finds itself in.

For several weeks now, the Drennans have lived in a construction zone.

Shon Drennan says, "You can see where the boards are starting to warp up a little bit. And we've had fans running because it's starting to smell a little bad."

Back in April, the Drennan's dealt with flooding like many of us. Yet their problem stems from what came up from under this house.

Drennan adds, "And out of all the years we've been here, 13 years, we've never had that much water that's gonna flood our house."

On April 9th and again on April 17th water flowed into their plumbing, out of the toilets, and all over the floor.  That's when Shon Drennan made two phone calls, one to a contractor and the other to the City of Willard.

The Drennans experienced this once several years ago. At the time, the city paid the Drennans more than a thousand dollars for floor repairs. In addition, the city paid $250 to install a back flow inhibitor on the property. That's a device meant to stop water from the city's pipes from entering the plumbing. Yet the Drennans say their flood home shows something clearly went wrong.

Drennan adds, "There was fault somewhere."

The family says the city initially agreed it would try to help out. So the Drennan's brought their estimate of $18,000 in repairs to the city. That's when they say the communication broke down.

Drennan says, "Everything was going fine, until we came up with a bid and all of a sudden it's turned over to their insurance. Insurance didn't even bother to come out and look at the problem. They just said, 'well the city said they're not liable, that's the way it's going to be."

Mayor Jamie Schoolcraft says, "We evaluated it, and turned it over to our insurance company, which is the appropriate thing for a city of our size to do."

The City of Willard counters even though its insurance company denied the claim, it still wants to work with the Drennans. So the city sent a letter on May 2nd, stating they wanted to have an independent plumber come in to look at the problem.

Schoolcraft adds, "Yeah, we want to see what caused the problem with their system. We want to try to resolve the issue, but they won't let us have access with a plumber to evaluated it, if that valve from a few years ago was installed, or installed properly."

Willard's mayor says he's not aware of this happening to any other homeowners in the city. Yet he says the city wants to help out. It just needs access to the Drennan's home.

Schoolcraft says, "Even if we were going to pay that amount of money, we'd still have to evaluate and see where the problem lay, so we make sure that we aren't spending taxpayer money on something that wasn't the responsibility of the city."

The Drennans called the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, and want that agency to look at the pipes first. The family says after that, they'll let the city in their home to look around.