And the culprit for the unpleasant odor that has vexed the picturesque town of about 300 people in Newfoundland and Labrador? About 110 tanks that were left behind — each holding 3,000 gallons of fermented fish sauce — when the Atlantic Seafood Sauce Company was abandoned more than 20 years ago. The sauce kept on fermenting as the bacteria did their job — and the townspeople could smell it. “The worst rotted fish you ever smelled in your lifetime, times 100,” he told The Associated Press by phone on Wednesday. But we “kept fighting and fighting,” he added, “because we knew we were right in what we were fighting for.”