Small Town Week, Episode 4: A New Brunswick town deals with a horrific stench

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Jordan Heath Rawlings The smaller your community is, the more likely it is to rely on one or even just a handful of employers to keep the economy stable. Remote work might be shifting this just slightly, but in general, most of Canada’s small towns have a couple of major tenants. It’s why we call them factory towns or lumber towns or university towns. So when employers are looking for a place to set up shop, especially if that shop might be a little noisy or disruptive or require some tax breaks, they know that promising a small town, a certain number of solid well-paying jobs is a pretty good way to get the community on board. That’s how it’s worked basically since industrialization, but sometimes, as is the case in one town in New Brunswick, it stinks. Literally. What happens when a factory moves into town promising the world. And then produces a stench so bad. It makes people physically gag. When the jobs are fewer than you hoped for, and the byproduct of the plant actively drives people away. And when you complain to the city, to the company, to the province about the wretched odour, that makes it difficult to go outside, they say, at least at first…What smell? I don’t smell anything. Do you? I’m Jordan Heath Rowlings. This is The Big Story. Lindsay Jones is an Atlantic Canada reporter with the Globe and Mail. Hi, Lindsay.

Lindsay Jones Hello, Jordan.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Thank you so much for finding time for us today.

Lindsay Jones Of course.

Jordan Heath Rawlings This is a week dedicated to a small towns across Canada and some of the issues that they face. so many of our listeners are not familiar with the places we’re going, so I’ll ask you, just to begin, where is, Richibucto, New Brunswick? What’s it like there?

Lindsay Jones So Richibucto, New Brunswick is an Acadian fishing town on the Richibucto River that is on the Northumberland Strait in New Brunswick. So it’s, it’s a beautiful area with just gorgeous water views. You, you drive into the town, there’s this sidewalk boardwalk that, you can walk all along the water by the main wharf. It’s a, it’s a very sweet little town. Though it, it has been, the population’s been dwindling and, there is a higher than average, unemployment rate in, in this community, compared to the rest of New Brunswick.

Jordan Heath Rawlings And most of the time, how does this little town smell?

Lindsay Jones Well, for the last six years off and on, there has been a company that has moved into what used to be a rum distillery in the town. And there they are drying lobster crab and shrimp shell. So this is waste from seafood processing plants that is being trucked into the town. And there, it’s, at this, factory called Coastal Shell. The shell are fed into a propane burning dryer and they’re, they, they use that product to ship to Asia and it’s used as fertilizer, pet food, and to make this, compound called Chitosan, which is being used in biomedical studies.

Jordan Heath Rawlings What does it smell like?

Lindsay Jones I guess that, that was your first question. So this town smells so bad. I, so the, the plant currently has hours, it can only operate between 8:00 PM and 8:00 AM due to concerns about the wretched smell. So, I came to the town in the afternoon. I caught a few little whiffs of a bad smell when the wind blew. But it wasn’t until I stayed until after half an hour after the plant started running at night, and I stood in the driveway of Claudette Rawbishaw. She is a registered nurse. She lives about 400 meters down wind from the plant, and she is one of seven people suing for loss of property value due to the awful smell. I stood in her driveway half an hour after the plant started running. The smell induced my gag reflux immediately. I just started choking and it was like a rotting animal burning rotten lobster smell. it was, it, it just, I had a physical reaction to it. I just could not be outside like I was, gagging and I had to jump in my car.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Oh man. Just hearing you try to describe that, like hearing you wrestle with your words to try to tell me what the smell is like induces kind of a physical reaction in me, cuz I can, I can hear it in your words, you know how, how wretched it must be.

Lindsay Jones Well, I’ve been trying to block it out of my memory ever since, but this is something the people there live with every day. And it, they’re, they’re like, last night they, they, they were dealing with it. They’re, they have to have their windows closed. They can’t go outside. It, it gets into the air system at the school for the, the, the children nearby. There’s a senior’s home and they can’t run their air conditioner. They can’t open their windows. They can’t go for walks.

Jordan Heath Rawlings So you mentioned this plant moved in, six years ago. You also mentioned, you know, there’s a high unemployment rate, so clearly it’s, it’s something at least at the time, that the community probably needed. What did they know about it in advance and, and did they know, I guess, what it would smell like when it was running?

Lindsay Jones Well, so these questions are, you know, going around in the town, like how did this ever happen? How come this company was allowed to move in and do this? And so it was a previous, town council that gave the go ahead for this. And in the company’s, approval to operate from the province, they said there would be no smell and that they had everything in place and, and so that just hasn’t happened. And so the, like over time, the company has had to scale back on its operating hours. They, they are being issued three month permits at a time they have till the end of June for the installation of odour control equipment. So that’s just to install it. It’s not even to see if it works or if it changes things. And so people are, are just fed up that they’re having to continue living like this.

Jordan Heath Rawlings How are they living? You mentioned, a woman named Claudette. Tell me a little bit about like what you do. Like how does it change your life when 12 hours or more out of every day, you’re surrounded by stench.

Lindsay Jones Well, it’s just really affected people’s quality of life, and I, I would say that they’ve, they’re even saying that it’s, it’s affecting their mental health as well. They just can’t enjoy. They, they say they can’t enjoy their properties and they can’t, it’s just always on their mind. If they’re gonna go out and, and do anything recreationally, like mow the lawn or have a few friends over for a barbecue, or they, they, they can’t do that. They can’t have a normal life.

Jordan Heath Rawlings How has this been going on for six years and it’s only now, that the company’s being asked to install odour protection?

Lindsay Jones Good question. The people in the town have been mobilizing for, for several years and, they, they don’t really feel listened to. I mean, those are really good questions for the, for politicians. They might s they might say that they, they hadn’t heard that this was a problem, but yeah, there is a, a very long, you know, paper trail of letters coming from people in the community, even last November, a petition was tabled at the legislature to stop the stink. You know, people have been, you know, asking for someone to step in for this for a very long time, and there is a public safety investigation going on into, into the smell in the town. However, it, it just keeps continue to, to fume out there.

Jordan Heath Rawlings What has the company said previously about this? You mentioned, that they kind of said there wouldn’t be an odour when they moved in. How long did it take them to acknowledge that there was a problem? I think in your piece at one point they just like are straight up telling the people of this town that there’s no odour.

Lindsay Jones Well, yeah, I mean the term gaslighting comes to mind here when so many people are denying that there’s a smell, and I mean, it is, it smell, yes can be subjective. And yes, it does depend on which way the wind is blowing. After being in this town for half an hour after the plant started, in someone directly affected it’s driveway, I have a hard time believing that people in positions of power don’t know about how bad this is for the community. The, the owners of the company don’t live in this community. They have said in their statement of defence that there is no smell, which, you know, may be a legal argument they need to make to protect themselves. However, in a statement to the Globe and Mail, they acknowledged the issue and said that they’re, they wanna work with the community and they’re doing everything they can to, to you know, fix the problem.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Do we know, and I I’m sure that you don’t know the specific answer to this question, but like, they must have known, if not about the odor, but they know what they’re doing in the plant. Right? And presumably this is not the only place in the world that dries these waste products, for processing. So like, Don’t we understand by now that th there is an odor associated with this, I guess is, are there examples anywhere else of, of plants that do this with no smell? I’m just trying to figure out how, how anomalous this is.

Lindsay Jones Well, there are other plants that do this. However they have the right equipment to ensure that there is no smell. Or, and, and also they may be located in an area that is, not, not affecting a, a school and people’s homes and a senior center.

Jordan Heath Rawlings In the big picture, how important is this plant, and the jobs that it provides to the town? And is there, is there a middle ground or is it like you live with this stench or you don’t have this plant and these jobs you need?

Lindsay Jones Well, 1600 people, which is more than the population of the town have asked the province to shut it down or move it in their petition to stop the stink. People do not want this in their town. The mayor is trying to, you know, find a way to make it work. This, this plant provides some tax revenue. It’s currently providing 26 jobs, which is, you know, a third less than the company said it would, employ at the time it was proposing the project. People feel like they, they do just have to live like this. Yes. That’s the unfortunate reality. They, they feel like no one’s sticking up for them.

Jordan Heath Rawlings And you mentioned that the company is, is planning by the end of June, to install this equipment. Is this stuff that we know works elsewhere or, is it just kind of like, well, we’ll put it in and we’ll see if it’s still going?

Lindsay Jones That’s a really good question. You know, presumably they’ve done their research. This is expensive equipment. Last I heard it was gonna cost over a million dollars. So, hopefully they’ve done their research and the people in the town will, will be alleviated of this wretched stink. The people of Richibucto New Brunswick are not, you know, these are…This is a fishing town. People are used to the smell of lobster waste of, of right lobster shells in their compost of fish bait on the wharf. This is not a prissy community where, you know, the people are gonna complain about, just a little bit of sewer smell in the air. This is unbreathable air.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Are people leaving the town because of this?

Lindsay Jones Well, there are for sale signs up on quite a few lawns around the plant. I haven’t, people that I’ve talked to want to leave, but they have, they realize that there’s no way they can sell their property right now with, with this, stench blowing right into their yard. No. Who would buy it?

Jordan Heath Rawlings Tell me about the lawsuit. Like what kind of recourse do these folks have, and what are they asking for?

Lindsay Jones They’re asking for money, for loss of value for their property. There are seven people named in this lawsuit. They’re all people directly affected by the stink. You know, this is, this is the only recourse they feel that they have. They’ve done everything else. They’ve reached out to the politicians, they’ve sent letters, and they’ve gone to the legislature. They’ve spoken to the premier, nothing has happened. And it seems as if, you know, the interests of of this business are more important than what people are having to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

Jordan Heath Rawlings You cover, the Atlantic region for the Globe. There are lots of small towns that are tied to, industries that they need in there. Without talking about the stench, which is obviously probably unique to this situation. How common is this dynamic where there’s kind of one large plant or industry or whatever in the town that there’s almost a symbiotic relationship with just because of the way the economy works and the size of the town and and shrinking populations and all that?

Lindsay Jones Well, I think we see similar dynamics happening where companies want to open pen fishing aquaculture, people in those communities see a big company moving in. There’s a, you know, there’s a very, small number of companies in the world that operate aquaculture and salmon, particularly salmon aquaculture. And people don’t want the, these companies moving in with having, with and putting fish waste, into their pristine ocean side communities. You know, there is a, there is definitely that dynamic in Atlantic Canada of small towns trying to fight against an industry moving in and, and, you know, trying to protect the pristine ocean environment from the waste of companies.

Jordan Heath Rawlings And I guess right now in Richibacto, all there is to do is wait and see if this technology works and the smell goes away. How hopeful are people? I mean, it’s been six years. How hopeful are people that this will work?

Lindsay Jones People have lost hope there. They are still mobilizing and planning. They’re not just waiting for this, to see if this will make a difference. There are, there are people who are, you know, actively still fighting and like, it’s a, it’s a real, it’s. Like, how can they do any different? This is, this is part every day, they still have to smell that stink, and they don’t trust the company because it has been so many years and nothing has worked. And so it seems as if the politicians are, are giving this company a lot of chances, to clean it up. This, they, they’ve been given an extension now this, this to, to the end of June to have this, equipment installed. So, you know, giving an extension, basically means that that’s longer amount of time that the people will have to keep smelling the stink.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Who makes the call on if it’s worked well enough or not? Maybe it mitigates some of the odor, but it still stinks. Like who makes the call and what happens?

Lindsay Jones Well, there isn’t a way to measure stink. The, the province has, a report that the company has provided by a third party measuring the emissions. So I’m trying to get a copy of that report to look at myself, and they, the province says that the emissions are, not harmful and that they, you know, they, they’re not, breaking any part of their agreement with the results of those of that report.

Jordan Heath Rawlings But not harmful just means like, it’s, it’s not giving you cancer or whatever. It doesn’t mean, it’s not like completely making you gag. Right? Like there’s a difference between, to your point, like you can’t measure a smell. You can measure particles that might do damage, but you know, how, how do you, how do you make sure that it’s not, unliveable?

Lindsay Jones That’s a good question. I mean, I guess they’re just, gonna have to…The people of the town are gonna continue to be Guinea pigs for this company.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Man, Lindsay, thank you so much for this. It’s a fascinating story. It’s a sad story. I hope. I hope the odor mitigation measures work, I guess.

Lindsay Jones Me too. I really hope so too.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Lindsay Jones writing in the Globe and Mail. That was The Big Story. For more, you can head to TheBigStorypodcast.ca, and as always, you can find us on Twitter @TheBigStoryfpn. If you wanna suggest a story and you can suggest a small town story beyond this week, we love to hear about them. You can find us at hello@TheBigStorypodcast.ca, or you can call us on the phone and leave a voicemail (416) 935-5935. You can find The Big Story in every single podcast player, and if you use smart speakers, just ask it to play The Big Story podcast. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.