Reprieve from Richibucto stink short-lived — company back in business after 2 days
Environment Department accepted company's mitigation plan on Saturday
The reprieve from the reek of rotting shellfish in Richibucto was disappointingly short-lived, say residents who have long complained about the smell wafting through their community.
After being shut down by the province on Thursday, Coastal Shell Products was given the go-ahead to resume operations on Saturday.
While residents enjoyed the break, they're disappointed it was so short-lived, said Maisie Rae McNaughton, founder of the "stop the stink" campaign in Beaurivage — the newly created entity that includes Richibucto — and a member of the Kent clean air action committee.
She said residents will continue their fight to have Coastal Shell Products shut down. On Tuesday, several of them travelled to Fredericton to protest over continued operations at the plant.
McNaughton said they hoped to "appeal to the decision-makers and speak on our behalf and say, 'Listen, this is so wrong.'"
She said the smell is "unlike anything I've smelled before. It smells like rotting lobsters mixed with burnt wires, and there's something in it that makes your eyes burn."
She said residents aren't even sure what's in the emissions from the plant.
"It burns your throat, it burns your lungs, it burns your eyes. You have no choice but to gag."
Two-day shutdown
After shutting down the plant on Thursday, the Department of Environment said it wouldn't reopen until it came up with a plan "to bring it back into compliance."
According to an emailed response from the department, the company submitted that plan on Saturday. It was accepted by the department and the order was rescinded later in the day.
Coastal Shell Products has been in operation in Richibucto since 2016.
Formerly known as Omera Shells, the company describes itself on its website as a "crustacean shell drying facility." It's been operating out of a 2,800-square-metre building on Morgan Street.
The plant heats and dries old lobster and snow-crab shells and shrimp skins that are then ground into a powder that's used for fertilizer and animal feed.
McNaughton lives "about 1.5 kilometres as the crow flies" from the facility.
"It has been a nightmare," she said.
"To be totally truthful, it has been one of the most heartbreaking things that I've ever had to live through because it's not just my family and myself who are affected, it's my neighbours, it's my friends.
"But more importantly, it's the vulnerable. It's the children that are in a school directly beside it — about 500 metres beside the plant."
There's also a seniors' complex about 600 metres from the plant, she said.
Although the facility's license to operate says the plant can only run from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., McNaughton said the smell is almost always present and "permeates all corners of our town."
She said it was even present more than 24 hours after the plant had been shut down last Thursday.
Residents say company breaking the law
McNaughton said Coastal Shell Products is in "constant violation" of the Clean Air Act of New Brunswick, which prohibits a company from releasing an odour that interferes with "the normal enjoyment of life or use or enjoyment of property."
"So every single time this plant fires up, they are violating a law in New Brunswick."
She said the facility should never have been allowed to operate in its present location, so close to houses, a school and a seniors' complex.
"When that plant is in operation, if the smoke is blowing your way, you can't turn your AC on, you cannot have your windows open. If you have your car running and it's drawing from the outside, that smell will linger in your car for hours, if not days."
Auréle Hébert also thinks the facility should move.
Hébert lives in nearby Saint-Charles, but he coaches volleyball at the school located on the same street as Coastal Shell Products.
He described the "really, really nasty smell" as if someone put a rotten lobster into the oven and turned it on. It's so bad, he said, they can't use the ventilation system at the school during their volleyball sessions.
"I'd like to see the factory to be relocated in a place where there's no houses. Not in a community. Somewheres where it would not bother anybody. Not in the middle of the town of Richibucto, now known as Beaurivage. It is really not the place for that plant to be."
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With files from Alexandre Silberman