It looks like water, it tastes like water, but it smells like rotten eggs.
Marshfield’s city water supply has residents holding their noses.
It has been a problem for decades but has gotten worse in the last few years.
And apparently, there's no quick fix.
The odor comes from an organism that attaches itself to a common mineral.
It’s not harmful to ingest but has certainly raised some concerns, especially for a business where water is essential to its services.
"It's usually at the shampoo bowls where it's the worst. The bathroom's pretty bad too."
It’s not exactly out of the ordinary to have a stinky restroom, but the stench at Indulgence Salon in Marshfield can't be blamed on something someone ate.
“As soon as you lay someone’s head back and turn the water on they get that whiff, and if I’m getting the whiff you know it must be really getting to them- that's when they say ‘Wow, what's that?’” explains stylist Diane Moses.
These hairstylists are talking about an odor emanating from the city's water supply.
“It smells like sulfur, rotten eggs,” says another stylist, Sharon Dabney.
Iron is what's causing it and one of the city's wells is to blame.
“It’s a good well as far as volume but it does have iron in it, and iron is part of the problem,” says Marshfield City Administrator Dan McMillan.
He says the city’s third well was dug about five years ago, and that's when the smell got worse.
“There’s a microbe that lives on that iron and that's where the smell comes from,” McMillan says.
Even before the most recent well, iron's been an issue.
Some houses still have galvanized pipes which contain iron.
Then there are the rods inside water heaters.
“The minerals, the iron minerals, react with that rod and that's what creates the sulfur smell."
The only permanent solution is to add chlorine to the water, but residents and city officials have been hesitant to use chemicals.
So instead, the city is going to clean the system yearly, which will offer temporary relief.
It will turn on Marshfield’s fire hydrants one at a time to flush out the water lines.
While the bathroom at Indulgence has nothing to do with it, it turns out flushing may help the problem after all.
Removing the rod from your water heater may help reduce the smell.
On a positive note, the odor-inducing microbe is a gas, so it evaporates into the air within minutes.
That means the smell is short-lived.