Protest to shut down or relocate Coastal Shell Products in N.B. sees support from all ages

Standing together against the smell from Coastal Shell Products in Richibucto, N.B., dozens of community members, parents and children showed up to Beaurivage Town Hall on Tuesday night.

“We’re a small town. When one of us hurts, we all hurt and in this case we are all hurting,” said Maisie Rae McNaughton with the Kent Clean Air Action Committee.

Ahead of the regularly scheduled council meeting, the group came forward with a strong and pointed message that they want the municipality to stand with them and fight for the closure or relocation of the plant.

“What you saw [Tuesday night] was a small town coming together and saying ‘enough is enough and this is effecting our children, our seniors, our vulnerable and it needs to end,’” said McNaughton.

Many in attendance were students from Soleil Levant, which is located just down the street from Coastal Shell Products.

McNaughton says there is an evacuation plan in place for the students on the days when the stench is too bad and they are often ushered in from recess, unable to stay outside.

“I love to play outside, if you ask anybody they’ll say the same thing, and when I can smell it we have to go inside and I hate it, but at the same time I don’t want to stay outside because I can smell it,” said Alexa Daegle who is in the Grade 7.

For Grade 6 Genevieve Gagnon, the smell sometimes stops her from even wanting to go to school.

“I went out for recess and it just makes my stomach hurt and it gives me really bad headaches so it’s hard to focus in class,” she said.

Adding, “A lot of the time when it’s hot outside we open a window, but the stink is too bad to open one.”

A large group of community members, including parents and children, protested outside of town hall hoping to “stop the stink” from Coastal Shell Products.

While the crowd stood outside with signs and chants, council met with McNaughton and Christian Poirier, the organizer of the protest Tuesday night, in a closed session.

“When I asked him what he was prepared to do to show, what the mayor would do to show that he is in support of our cause, he said his hands are tied and that there’s nothing he can do,” said McNaughton.

“I asked him to enforce bylaws that already exist and he said the bylaws have been grandfathered in and that there’s nothing they can do.”

She said that nothing has changed, and the fight for clean air is far from over.

“We need to continue to appeal to the humanity of the decision makers of New Brunswick and ask them ‘if this was your child going to that school, if this was your business that was causing the detriment to an entire community, what would you do?’ And if the answer is close it or move it away, then help us to do the same. There is no reason that we should not be able to breathe clean air in 2023,” said McNaughton.

Members from the protest filled the seats as the regular town hall meeting got underway, many standing against walls and in doorways to be apart of the question and answer session that followed.

Several members took place in a question and answer period following the regular scheduled town hall Tuesday night.

Several people expressed their concerns and frustrations as they asked for council to do something to fix the ongoing problem.

“If they were going to fix the smell, it would have been done a long bloody time ago,” one man said.

Adding, “I want you to make a plan, I want you to inform us all what you’re going to do to help us stop that plant!”

Others talked about the fact that they aren’t scared of a potential lawsuit by shutting down Coastal Shell Products, saying that children can’t use their tax dollars for the intended purposes anyways.

“The kids are telling you when they get home that they don’t want to go to daycare because it smells,” said parent Mireille Johnson.

“I mean, my kids love going to daycare, they love their daycare teachers and they just enjoy playing with their friends, but when it comes to the point where they feel sick or nauseous at daycare, they don’t want to go.”

Shelby Vautour has lived in the area for 30 years, and she also is upset that kids aren’t able to play outside at daycare.

“It needs to go somewhere else. It’s not a place, in the middle of a community, to put a shop that is going to pollute the air. Put that in the middle of the woods, put that in an industrial park where that’s where everybody else is going,” she said.

Beaurivage Mayor, Arnold Vautour, says he hears what the community is saying and he says he is with them.

“I want to correct this problem that we’re having, this major problem, because it’s really the municipality, the town of Beaurivage, all the town is suffering from this,” he said.

“We can’t sell no house, we can’t do so-on and so-on, so really the town of Beaurivage is really going down with this smell we’re having.”

He adds that council will be having a special meeting on Wednesday to discuss and make a decision on where the municipality stands, and what it can do.

“We have talked about it and now we’re looking at what our lawyers are telling us about certain things what we can do and what we can’t do, so we’re trying to work with our lawyers to make sure we can do things right.”

The Kent Clean Air Action Committee has a meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday, which Vautour says he plans to attend.

“If we do a plan we will work with different committees,” he said.

“The people at KCAAC, the school board, the parents, to make sure we can work together and see what we can do together to make things happen to make sure that we have something in Beaurivage that the people feel home again.”

CTV News reached out to Coastal Shell Products for comment and didn’t hear back by the time of publication.

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