The fine folks of O’Fallon, Illinois have noticed something a little weird about their tap water recently: It stinks. Not “stinks” like it tastes bad, but “stinks” as in it smells like an elephant’s vagina that was packed with garlic cream cheese three days ago.

Ok, maybe it’s not that bad…or maybe it is…honestly we’ve never smelled either. We could have nailed our stink description completely, but we’ll hopefully never know.

Dennis Sullivan says low levels on the Mississippi River have caused the water to become more turbid.

“Basically, that’s the small particles in the water,” Sullivan explained. “You can’t see them but they’re there though. If you had the ability to settle them out, you’d see them and with those come an odor.”

Sounds like what he’s trying to say is that the Mississippi River is low, so all the usual dead body debris and fish poop that usually isn’t a factor, is not turning up in your water.

But Sullivan says the supplier, Illinois American Water, has the best labs in the country and has determined it is safe to drink. “I have no qualms about the quality, the drinking quality, of drinking water. Unfortunately, it’s aesthetically not as pleasing as it is normally.”

Well that’s not exactly the best answer, but O’Fallon is in the Metro East so these people are used to stuff that looks horrible and may, but probably won’t, kill you. Frankly, if the stank water is fine, this is great news. People over there are always looking for stuff that won’t get you killed and now they can add drinking stinky cloudy water to that list. “Look if you have to drive through East St. Louis to get to work every morning, the cloudy stinky water shouldn’t be your biggest worry, ok?” Sullivan (probably) followed up.

“Our water over here smells like clean Missouri living, it’s really hitting to spot and helping to wash down all these Applebee’s meals!” said the other area O’Fallon (Missouri) in a statement.

via KMOX