A foul odor permeated from a massive bag of human excrement sludge left on a street corner in San Francisco's Tenderloin district Saturday.
The horrendous smell and sight quickly gained notoriety when a Reddit user posted a screen shot of a report made to San Francisco's Citizen app for identifying crimes.
"Twenty pounds of feces dumped onto sidewalk," the report called out.
Nancy Alfaro, a spokesperson for 311, says three reports of the human waste at the corner of Cedar and Polk were made to the city's customer service number and app on Saturday.
"The customers did report a large amount of waste," Alfaro says. "It was sent to Public Works."
San Francisco Mayor Mark Farrell announced a plan to pick dirty needles off the streets.
Media: KTVUAlfaro says while reports of human waste are common, this large of an amount is "not typical."
She "has no idea" why the bag was left in the neighborhood.
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Another Reddit user posted an image of the bag of poop on Saturday evening and said it was still there "as of 8 p.m."
"It was the most atrocious smell I've ever smelled in San Francisco," user tusi2 said.
The user said the waste was still on the corner at 10 p.m. but by Sunday morning it was gone.
"I wouldn't say this typical," said tusi2, who has lived in the Tenderloin for two years. "I can't say I've seen anything like that. I've seen open feces, smeared feces. I commend whoever put it in a bag. It could have been much worse."
Rachel Gordon, a spokesperson for San Francisco's Department of Public Works, confirms the mess was cleaned up Saturday night and she says a DNA sample wasn't taken to confirm whether it was human feces or waste from another animal.
"I don't know the source," Gordon says. "It could be people. It could be dogs. It could have been feces picked up from street. It could have been from someone's house. I'm glad it was in one place and in a bag."
Complaints about human waste around San Francisco increased by 400 percent from 2008 to 2018, according to 311. There were more than 21,000 reports made to 311 in 2017 alone. (Note: Some of the increase is likely due to more people using 311 when it became accessible through an app in 2013.)
The waste is largely linked to the thousands of people living in the city without housing and without access to public restrooms.
The City of San Francisco has added 18 staffed public restrooms known as pit stops since 2014 and there are plans to add five more. "We average about 1 flush every 10 minutes, collectively from those," says Rachel Gordon, a spokesperson for San Francisco's Department of Public Works.