Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

Post by tantalor » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 6:15 PM UTC

peri-cl wrote: post #65

I recall reading there were zoning laws in the classical era about where you could manufacture garum (the Roman fermented fish condiment). Here's one attributable example I could find, from the tail end of the Eastern empire. This is 2.4.22 in the Hexabiblos (1344–1345) ["–" sic ] of the Byzantine jurist, Constantine Harmenopoulos of Thessalonica; it legislates a ~450–600-meter exclusion zone (three stadia ). The arc…

Post by tantalor » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #104

inigyou wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The environment can handle dead fish. We just don't want it doing that near the humans because it's smelly. Dumping fermented fish wouldn't be like dumping crude oil.

The "environment" can handle basically anything given the right conditions and timescale. It's very much 'the dose makes the poison' here, too (eg. how stormwater ponds help protect watersheds from road salt runoff, but often themselves become far too saline to sustain the same ecosystem as the watershed). So while you're not wrong, none of what you commented really means anything. It's a broad assertion without any…

Post by xboxnolifes » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 6:21 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #78

hluska wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sludge was actually tested and analyzed- it’s not compatible with marine life and would in fact cause an ecological disaster. It’s why they’re mixing it with peat moss and also why they’re doing the work now - the factory itself has been battered by waves and the vats are in danger of being washed into the sea.

>it’s not compatible with marine life and would in fact cause an ecological disaster And this can't be solved by dilution?

Post by xboxnolifes » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 6:23 PM UTC

alwa wrote: post #55

sneak wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sewers go places, and it is nearly a million liters of extremely concentrated stinky. If you do this, you take a single location source of stinky and smear it over a much larger set of locations that will then ALL be extremely stinky, in a way that isn’t easily cleaned with water as the fats and oils (also extremely stinky!) are of course not soluble.

So, but… where do most fish go when they die?

Post by stickfigure » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 6:29 PM UTC

hluska wrote: post #70

anon84873628 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the linked Eater article: >Perhaps the most promising and most discouraging event for the factory happened in 2016. That year, the provincial government approved a cleanup plan, and a private company began the process. But the cleanup was halted soon after it started when it became clear that the contractors were dumping several dozen vats of rotten fish sauce directly into the ocean. According to Ryan, the prov…

In 2016, they dumped forty bats into the ocean but Environment Canada did some testing on the sludge and found that it would kill fish within five minutes. The environmental cost would have been obscene - it’s acidic, extremely salty and has little to no oxygen. This would have been a disaster. It’s why they’re mixing it with peat moss before they bury it - they don’t want it to touch the water table. I don’t really…