ST. JOHN’S — It will cost $1.74 million to clean up an abandoned, rotting fish sauce plant whose stench has been tormenting a rural Newfoundland community for years.
The Newfoundland and Labrador government awarded a contract last week to remove 110 vats of rotting fish sauce left behind in the decaying building in St. Mary’s, N.L., about 95 kilometres southwest of St. John’s.
Steve Ryan, the town’s mayor, says the work should begin at the end of this month, after the nearby school lets out for the summer. The smell will likely get worse as the work begins, and nobody wants the students to suffer through it, he said in an interview.
“The people who never smelled it before are going to smell it,” Ryan said.
The Atlantic Seafood Sauce Company Ltd. building sits on the shoreline of the town of about 300 people, just steps from the ocean. It first opened in 1990, but the owner abandoned it roughly a decade later after a series of legal battles.
Left behind are 110 oozing barrels of fermenting sauce, some of which has seeped into sloshing pools on the sauce plant’s floor. Depending on the wind direction, the stench from the building drafts out over parts of the community, engulfing the school and neighbouring houses.
Ryan said Capital Environmental Ltd., the company selected to clean out the building, will first have to solidify all the liquid inside by mixing it with peat moss. Then it will transport the substance to a waste facility in Sunnyside, N.L., where it will be buried.
Ryan said the $1.74 million price tag is more than the province had budgeted for, but the government told him it would absorb the cost overrun.
The provincial Department of Environment, Conservation and Climate Change did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ryan expects the work to be completed in September. After that, he hopes the province will post another call for companies interested in tearing down the building and getting rid of it for good.
In the meantime, he knows of at least one resident who is planning to open a bed and breakfast once the town’s ordeal with the fetid fish sauce smell is finally over. The home they’d like to turn into an inn is quite close to the building, Ryan said.
“They don’t want to do anything with it right now, and I wouldn’t either,” he said, laughing. “How do you promote that? ‘Look out your window and see the sauce plant?’”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 9, 2026.
Sarah Smellie, The Canadian Press
Add CityNews Toronto as a trusted source on Google to see more local stories from us.
