Newfoundland Fish Sauce Plant Cleanup Begins After Decades of Odor Complaints

Cleanup crews have begun removing rotting fish-sauce waste from the long-abandoned Atlantic Seafood Sauce Company plant in St. Mary’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, tackling a problem that has hung over the community for decades.

The plant, abandoned in the early 2000s after legal and regulatory problems, has produced a powerful rotten-fish odour in St. Mary’s for years. Now, workers are moving through 110 abandoned tanks of fermented fish sauce, part of a cleanup expected to take several months.

A decades-old odour

The Atlantic Seafood Sauce Company plant opened in 1990. By the early 2000s, it had been abandoned, leaving behind tanks of fermenting fish sauce and a smell that became one of the town’s defining frustrations.

Mayor Steve Ryan has not been subtle about what residents have endured.

“Take the worst rotten fish you’ve ever smelled in your life and times it by 100,” Ryan told The New York Times, according to UPI.

For Ryan and St. Mary’s council, the start of cleanup work marks the result of years of pressure on governments to get the site dealt with.

“I think we’re to a point where we’re there. We’re actually really close to the finish line,” Ryan told reporters. “Hopefully now we’re going to get [it] cleaned up once and for all.”

What crews are removing

The cleanup centres on 110 abandoned tanks of fermented fish sauce. The material to be removed totals about one million litres.

That scale helps explain why the job is expected to stretch over several months. The waste is not simply being pumped out and forgotten. Sharp Management is overseeing the cleanup, and workers are cutting open and draining the tanks, mixing the contents with peat moss, and hauling the material away by truck.

Glenn Sharp, who is leading the work for Sharp Management, described the project as unusual.

“This is a unique job,” Sharp told reporters, according to The Canadian Press. “This is a special waste, designated as a unique special waste. This does not fall under any of the standard classifications.”

Sharp also warned that the work itself can make the odour worse before the site is finally cleared.

“It almost makes a feeling in the back of your throat from the smell,” he said. “We have to go through this to get it out and get it gone.”

How the cleanup works

The removal process is methodical. Workers cut open the tanks, drain the long-fermented contents, mix the waste with peat moss, then load it for transport by truck.

The waste is being hauled to a specially prepared disposal cell. Sharp said the goal is to contain the odour once the material is placed there.

“Although this is a very stinky, smelly item, it will be sealed at the end of the day,” he told CBC News. He compared the final sealing to closing “like a Ziploc bag.”

The Newfoundland and Labrador government is funding the cleanup, ending a long period in which the town pressed for help with a site it could not ignore.

A mayor’s long fight

Ryan and St. Mary’s council pushed governments for years to get the plant cleaned up. The mayor has become closely identified with the issue, something he now hopes can finally end.

“To be known as the ‘sauce plant mayor’ ... it’s time for that to be over,” Ryan said, according to UPI.

At the start of the cleanup, Ryan framed the moment as a sign that the community’s persistence had paid off, even as he cautioned that the work is not finished.

“I know we’re going to have hiccups going forward,” he said. “But this crew that I have sat behind here [at] this table with me, I know what we’re after overcoming up to here. We’re able to overcome anything now.”

Several months ahead

The job is expected to take several months, meaning St. Mary’s is not free of the old fish-sauce plant yet. But for the first time in years, the problem is being physically removed, tank by tank and truckload by truckload.

For a community that has lived with the rotten-fish odour for decades, the cleanup represents more than a public works project. It is the beginning of the end of a long-abandoned mess that residents and their council fought for years to have taken away.

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