Overview
- This week crews began draining roughly 110 vats at the defunct Atlantic Seafood Sauce Company and have removed about 330,000 gallons of fermented fish sauce to reduce a decades-long odor problem.
- Workers mix the pumped liquid with peat moss so the waste can be handled safely, load it onto trucks, and transport it to a specially engineered, lined containment cell in Summerside for burial.
- The contractor overseeing the job called the material a “special” waste that does not fit standard classifications, which is why crews are using peat moss and an engineered lined pit rather than routine landfill handling.
- The roughly $1.21 million project is being paid with provincial support and a temporary municipal loan of CAD 198,000 that the town expects to be reimbursed, and the federal government has not contributed.
- Residents of St. Mary’s, a community of about 300 people that has endured the smell for more than 20 years, say the removal brings practical relief and ends years of appeals after the plant fell into ruin following its closure.