ST. MARY’S IN CANADA IS ABOUT TO FINALLY BE FREE OF THE STENCH OF 20 YEARS OF ROTTEN FISH
I’ve been pretty fortunate in never having lived downwind, literally or virtually, of a constant, disgusting stink. But for people in St. Mary’s, Canada, that’s been their literal reality for at least 20 years. So what constitutes a constant, disgusting stink? How about the smell of rotten fish? Not fresh fish, or recently gutted fish sitting on the end of the dock. Rotten fish. Literally every time the wind blew a certain direction, that’s the smell all the residents of that tiny community in Labrador smelled. Can you imagine? Say your kids walked to school, and the wind was filled with that smell, and that’s how your kids smelled until they got home, showered and you laundered their clothes.
110, 3,000 GALLON TANKS FILLED WITH FERMENTING FISH SAUCE WILL TAKE SOME EFFORT TO CLEAN OUT
Well, unless of course the wind kept bringing the staggering stench, regardless. Sure, only about 300 people live in St. Mary’s. But there are young adults living there who’ve only been able to vote and drink legally for two years (hey, it’s Canada) who haven’t known any other reality their entire lives. Well, until now, that is. The smell of rotten fish has been coming from 110 tanks, each of which have been holding 3,000 gallons of fermented fish sauce that have been rotting, abandoned, for 2 decades. It was 20 years ago when the Atlantic Seafood Sauce Company abandoned their old property, which included the 110 tanks filled with fish slurry.
IT WILL TAKE MONTHS FOR WORKERS TO SAFELY CLEAN IT ALL OUT INTO AN INDUSTRIAL LANDFILL
And this is where you have to realize this was, again, fermented fish sauce. As in, fermenting via bacteria in tanks. That process….. never stopped. For 20 years. And when the wind went “down” from the tanks to the town, it took that spectacular rotten fish smell with it. Like all too often in America, St. Mary’s was a small, remote local town that the Feds wouldn’t help, despite years of pleas to do so. But the provincial government finally stepped in to get the job done. It will take a few months for workers to drain all the remaining rotten fish sauce and mix it into peat moss to absorb all the liquid. Then all that soaked peat moss will be taken to a massive pit to be finally buried.
And yes, that pit is massive. It took 3 weeks to dig it out and line it with high-density polyethylene. St. Mary’s may have their first Christmas in 20 years where their egg nog won’t smell like…. rotten fish.
