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Waikato Regional Council officer taking sample of effluent flow path.
Farming company JB Thomas and Sons Limited has been convicted and fined $71,250 for unlawfully discharging dairy effluent into the environment at its Reporoa farm in November 2021.
The sentence was imposed by Chief Environment Court Judge David Kirkpatrick in the Rotorua District Court last week.
This is the company’s third such prosecution following similar convictions for pollution in 2001 and 2020.
The case was taken by Waikato Regional Council, under the Resource Management Act, following an inspection where officers found the effluent storage pond on the property was full and had been overflowing.
The overflow had run into a farm drain that discharged into the Kopuhurihuri Stream, a tributary to the Waiotapu Stream.
This discharge also breached an abatement notice previously issued to the company by the council in 2019 directing the company to manage its effluent lawfully.
In sentencing the company, Judge Kirkpatrick referred to “poor management” and commented that “the gravity of the offending and the culpability of the defendant are moderately serious in this case”.
He added that “while not deliberate, I consider the defendant was clearly careless” and “the breach of an abatement notice is a significant offence in itself as the process of issuing abatement notices has the purpose of avoiding repeat offending”.
Rawhiti Environmental Park Limited has been convicted on eight charges and fined a total of $437,000 for persistent discharges of raw piggery effluent into the environment between February and October 2023.
A farm owner and two former Waikato contract milkers were recently fined $27,000 over a lack of feed for 230 cattle and a lack of treatment for cows suffering from milk fever.
Changes to resource management laws announced last week will spare thousands of farmers from needing an unnecessary resource consent just to keep farming.
A Taupiri farming company has been convicted and fined $52,500 in the Hamilton District Court for the unlawful discharge of dairy effluent into the environment.
Convictions and fines totalling $112,500 have been imposed on a logging company for repeated environmental damage on a farm near Wahi between August 2022 and October 2023.
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