JACKSON (WNE) — During rush hour on Highway 22 on Thursday evening, a distracted driver rear-ended a truck carrying a vat of human waste, releasing about 250 gallons of raw sewage onto the highway.

“I didn’t see chunks of raw sewage,” said Wyoming Highway Patrol Trooper Todd Baxter, who responded to the incident. “I mostly saw black water with wet toilet paper in it.

“It smelled wonderful,” he added.

The incident occurred in the eastbound lane of the highway near the Skyline Subdivision, about 2 miles from town, at around 5:30 p.m., Baxter said.

A local woman in a Land Rover hit a truck owned by Macy’s Services, a local septic service business, when traffic was backed up. Law enforcement cited her for following too closely, Baxter said.

The truck was carrying a portable toilet and a container of sewage. The collision broke a pipe on the back of the truck, releasing human waste onto the roadway.

Following the accident, additional employees from Macy’s arrived at the scene with more trucks and constructed a berm out of dirt at the bottom of a hill. The fire department truck used a truck with hoses to wash the sewage down to the berm, where Macy’s staff suctioned it up. The cleanup took a few hours, Baxter said.

“It just sort of ran down the edge of the highway and got scooped up,” he said.

The driver of the Land Rover was not injured in the accident. The driver of the sewage truck went to the hospital because of neck pain from the collision, but was released shortly after, Baxter said.

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