I have a part of an article here:
byNaoibhO'Connor
staff writer
It was the neighbours who noticed first. Rats were crawling all over the alley behind an East Side Chinese restaurant, prompting neighbours to call the health department. David Jantzen, one of the city's 40 environmental health officers, jumped in his car and headed out to inspect the place. When he arrived, the owner claimed he hadn't noticed any problems, but Jnni/.en insisted on looking around. Downstairs, lie spotted a piece of plywood covering an acess point to the crawl space. Lifting it up, Jantzen was shocked at what he saw.
"At the bottom, there was liquid in it and it looked like sewage—that was pretty disgusting," he recalled of the incident, which occurred several years ago.
The sewer line had buckled and separated at the point where it connected with the restaurant's toilets. Customers' raw waste was simply being flushed underneath the building, attracting rats that could easily spread contaminants around the property.
The owner admitted he'd known about a leak in die sewage system, but blamed the building manager for failing" to fix it. Neither had done anything to address the health risk. Instead, they were arguing about who was responsible and who would pay for the sewer line repair. It's unclear how long the line had been broken—maybe weeks, maybe months.
"Neither had done anything to address the health risk". <---- why had?? why not have?? what difference does it make in meaning if they used "had" or "have"?