Residents in a Texas neighborhood are angry that their mail apparently has been going down the drain.

Brenda Tisdale was walking her dogs in a southwest neighborhood in Mesquite when she noticed a few clean, white pieces of paper in a sewer drain, KTVT reported.

“I was thinking, ‘that’s where all of our mail has gone,’” Tisdale told KTVT.

She said she found “hundreds” of sealed envelopes of undelivered mail teetering toward the sewer. There were stacks of new mail and some were still rubber-banded in groups.

“It would have went on down to the river,” Tisdale said. “Nobody would have ever known.”

Another resident, Audrey Carter, said her neighborhood has experienced mail-delivery problems for the past year. She and others claimed to have outstanding, missing mail.

“Mail not running for days. Maybe at 7 or 8 o’clock at night. Torn mail. I have found mail on the neighbor’s lawn,” Carter told KTVT.

But on Thursday, “It was as if somebody just took a tray or something and just dumped it straight in,” Carter said.

People’s personal information  also could have been compromised.

“Now it makes me want to look in each gutter that I pass by,” Tisdale told KTVT.

In a statement, the U.S. Postal Service said called the lost mail “a very serious matter.”

“This type of alleged behavior within the Postal Service is not tolerated and the overwhelming majority of Postal Service employees, which serve the public, are honest, hardworking, and trustworthy individuals who would never consider engaging in any type of criminal behavior,” the statement read.

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