The mayor of St. Mary’s says he’s not giving up on the fight to have the mess left at the abandoned fish sauce plant in his town properly cleaned up.

The facility, which has been sitting idle for nearly 20 years, still contains 110 tanks of what was once putrefying capelin offal.

Mayor Steve Ryan says some 40 tanks were previously removed but not before the effluent they contained was flushed out into the ocean.

DFO put a stop to that, but a report conducted in 2016, showing that the slurry being pumped into the ocean was highly toxic to fish, was unknown until it was revealed in an Access to Information Request by the CBC.

Since then Mayor Ryan says he’s learned that the lethal and highly explosive gas Hydrogen Sulphide has also been detected on site.

Ryan is concerned about the air quality at nearby Dunne Memorial Academy, a school with 60 students. He has asked the school board to get some air quality readings at the school, however the board has yet to move in that direction.

“I’m not going away,” he says, “I am not going away.”