Rotting fish-sauce plant whose stench torments Newfoundland town will be cleaned up

Bottles of the fish sace produced at a long-abandoned plant in St. Mary's, N.L., are shown strewn outside the building on Thursday June 12, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sarah Smellie

A coastal Newfoundland town besieged for decades by the fetid stench wafting from an abandoned fish-sauce factory has finally received good news.

Steve Ryan, the mayor of St. Mary’s, N.L., said he nearly broke down in tears when officials with the Newfoundland and Labrador government told him the province would foot the bill to clean up the festering site. The promise brings residents close to the end of a decades-long ordeal that has kept them indoors on beautiful days, lest the smell get in their hair and clothes.

“I get emotional just talking about it,” the 53-year-old said, shaking his head outside his grocery store a few minutes from the town.

“It’s an everyday thing with the smell — people can’t do normal stuff, like have a barbecue on their deck or hang out their laundry,” he added. “It gets into your nose, it gets into your mouth, it just gags you.”

The decaying Atlantic Seafood Sauce Company Ltd. building sits on the shoreline of the town of about 300 people, just steps away from the ocean. It first opened in 1990, bringing about two dozen much-needed jobs to the area, Ryan said. But the owner abandoned it about a decade later, after extended legal battles about food safety complaints.

More than 100 oozing vats of fermenting fish remain in the crumbling building. Liquids from the 11,500-litre tanks once ran into the harbour through a broken drain pipe, but the federal fisheries department demanded the run-off system be sealed with concrete, Ryan said.

Now the fluids pool in the plant, creating a putrid stew roughly 30 centimetres deep, Ryan said.

On a warm Thursday afternoon last week, the odour inside the building was dense and wet, as if it could be squeezed through the fingers of a fist.

It was a good day, Ryan said. In the late summer and fall, when the winds are blowing just right, the smell engulfs the nearby houses, school and baseball field.

St. Mary’s is a quiet, picturesque town on a sparkling ocean inlet, just minutes away from a whale-watching beach popular with tourists and locals. It would be a perfect spot for a few B&Bs, but the smell discourages anyone from trying to attract visitors, Ryan said.

“How would you advertise?” he asked. “Look what we have as our view and our smell?”

But now there is hope. A spokesperson with Newfoundland and Labrador’s Department of Environment and Climate Change confirmed Friday the province has told the town to issue a request for proposals for a consultant to plan and oversee the plant’s cleanup. Money for the remediation work has been set aside in the provincial budget.

Ryan credited former premier Andrew Furey for taking an interest and setting the funds aside. International media attention helped too, he said.

“To be forgotten about for so long, and all of a sudden now … being successful in getting this cleanup funded,” his voice trailed off and he shook his head again.

“Over the past 10 years, we’ve dealt with two or three ministers, two or three premiers, a couple of federal ministers that ... were in no way helpful, they probably held us up,” he added.

Ryan wouldn’t say how much he expects it to cost — he doesn’t want to jeopardize the town’s chances of getting a good price the province can afford, he said. But previous assessments indicate it may exceed $1 million. It’s a price tag far out of reach for the volunteer council in a town with just a few hundred tax payers, he said.

The municipality voted to take ownership of the site earlier this year, he said. It was the only way the province could then step in and help clean it up. Once the work is done, he hopes the council will put the plant site up for auction and another business will step in.

But they’ll have to have a clear exit plan so the situation doesn’t happen again, he said.

In the meantime, residents know the smell will likely get worse as the site is torn apart before it gets better, Ryan said.

“We have no issue with that,” he said. “This has got to be done.”

By Sarah Smellie

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 16, 2025.