Students who feel they received a free sewage shower by Cole Hall Wednesday aren’t quite on the money.

“If people really knew what raw sewage smelled like, they wouldn’t think that,” said building maintenance director Michael Saari.

Though the fountain outside Cole was emitting a noticeably sewage-like odor throughout the course of the day, students need not be concerned about the contents of the water, Saari said. The substance students are smelling is silt, not sewage.

Silt is mud, clay or small rocks deposited by a river or lake.

“Probably due to the storm, there was a high volume of runoff water containing silt from the fields,” Saari said. “When silt gets caught on banks, it starts to decay, creating an odor.”

Though last week’s flooding created issues of sewage mixing with the Kishwaukee River overflow, contaminated water reaching the fountains isn’t possible, Saari said.

“The water from Watson Creek is discharged into the east lagoon, which is then discharged into the Kishwaukee River,” he said.

The elevation of the creek in comparison to the Kishwaukee makes any water from the river reaching the Cole fountains impossible, Saari said.