BATON ROUGE - Less than two weeks after 2 On Your Side first reported on a dip in the road in Riverbend, a crew got out there to dig up the street and repair the problem for good.

A contracted crew started the work Monday morning, tearing up the street to replace a leaking pipe between two storm drains.Video taken by the crew earlier this month showed where the problem areas were under ground.

"It showed we had some problems, some leaks, particularly at the joints," Transportation Director Fred Raiford said.

The leaking 12-inch pipe has been swapped out for a 15-inch pipe to handle some of the rainwater. The trench in the road was filled in with limestone, which will take several days to compact. Once it's stable the crew will be back to patch the area with asphalt.

Riverbend Boulevard is typically a very busy roadway and accommodates a large neighborhood. It's one of the reasons why the job was put on the parish's priority list. It's also been on the "to do" list for about four years.

Angela Aucoin called 2 On Your Side about the issue about two weeks ago - a dip in the road that was getting worse. As she drove down the boulevard she tried to avoid the dip and noticed her neighbors were avoiding it too.

"They're doing the same thing too, a lot of our neighbors have complained about it and they're going around it too because they've noticed the dip has gotten worse in the last six months," Aucoin said.

She suspected something was happening with the drainage under the road but had trouble getting a response from the city about a plan to address the problem.

"None of us have," she said. "The lady that first started mentioning this the other day, she's called several numbers and nobody's reached out to her they directed her to different places."

That quickly changed. A crew was out taking a look at the dip within 24 hours of a WBRZ story airing. The crew ran a camera underground and dug up a portion of the dip to patch it with asphalt. The work to make a permanent fix started this week.

"Our goal and objective is try to get the job done as quickly as possible and make sure it does what it needs to," Raiford said.

The road will be much safer and drivers like Aucoin won't have to worry about avoiding a dip in the road. Raiford says work to patch the area with asphalt will happen in the next two weeks or so.

The project cost is being covered with American Rescue Plan dollars.