A stream in Hawaii is now contaminated with beer — with the smell to match.

A hiker discovered the issue while hiking near the H-2 freeway in Waipio on the island of Oahu, and then recently alerted a local environmental activist, Carroll Cox, about the horrendous smell. Cox has been a watchdog in Hawaii for decades and he says the public feels comfortable coming to him with concerns about issues they’ve seen.

It wasn’t the first time the hiker noticed the smell, however, and he reportedly indicated to Cox that he first detected the foul odor five years ago.

“The other day we came here, you would think it was a beer pub that hadn’t opened its doors for three or four days,” Cox told Hawaii News Now, which first reported the story.

When Hawaii News Now conducted its own tests, using an independent laboratory, of the stream’s water, the news outlet discovered that 1.2% of the water contained alcohol.

“The alcohol is not suitable for marine life; it’s toxic,” Cox told SFGATE, and noted that the route the water was taking would lead it to the Waiawa Stream, then to Pearl Harbor, and eventually to the ocean.

Also concerned that the alcohol content was so strong that it could potentially become flammable, Cox alerted Hawaii’s State Department of Health.

The culprit may be a spill through a storm pipe near a freeway, possibly from Paradise Beverages, Hawaii’s largest distributor of alcoholic beverages. It operates five warehouses in Hawaii: two on the Big Island (in Hilo and Kailua-Kona), one on Kauai, one on Maui and the one on Oahu that may be contaminating the stream.

Paradise Beverages, the Department of Health and the Department of Transportation, which owns the pipe, are all investigating the source of the contamination.

“It may be coming from us so that’s why we’re working with the proper authorities,” Anthony Rowe, Paradise Beverages’ director of operations, told Hawaii News Now.

“Hawaii is a fragile environment and it’s always at risk due to these kinds of dumpings,” says Cox. “What we want to see here in this case is that the Hawaii State Clean Water Branch takes legal action against the DOT, and then the DOT is bound to take action against the person that is responsible for the discharge.”