Fines upheld against 'dirty dairy' farmer

High Court upholds record fines against Manawatu ‘dirty dairy’ farmer

By Jonathan Underhill

Sept. 3 (BusinessDesk) – A Manawatu farmer and businessman has failed to overturn record fines and costs imposed for waste water and effluent discharges which found their way into local river systems.

Kenneth Thurston was ordered to pay $187,545 in fines and costs for two sets of offences relating to a former meat works site at Longburn near Palmerston North and a dairy farm near Feilding. He challenged the fines as being “manifestly excessive,” saying they were out of whack with penalties imposed in similar cases.

Justice Forrest Miller turned down the appeal, describing Thurston’s offending at the Longburn site as “cynical” and “a calculated attempt to avoid costs of disposal.”

The Manawatu region has been at the frontline in a battle between local bodies and farmer groups over responsibility for polluted waterways, with Federated Farmers putting considerable resource into battling Horizons Regional Council’s ‘One Plan’ for improving catchment water quality, which included restrictions on farming activity. The lobby group refused to join a Horizons-sponsored ‘Manawatu River Leaders’ Forum’ and launched its own rival ‘People’s Accord.’

Thurston’s Aotea Coolstores owned the former Longburn plant, part of which was leased to a unit of Goodman Fielder making processed meats. Aotea retained responsibility for disposing of waste water contaminated with nitrates and nitrites.

The site previously had resource consent to discharge into the Manawatu River, though these had lapsed by the time of the offending, the regional council had contended. Until March 2006, Thurston had trucked the waste water to a Palmerston North City Council-owned treatment plant, which initially processed the waste without charge but then imposed “substantial” charges. At that point, Thurston stopped using the facility and had a hose installed to divert waste water to a drain that discharged into the river, avoiding the new treatment charges.

Thurston was in a bind because the site was leased until 2035 and the monthly rent didn’t cover the cost of disposing of the waste water, Miller’s judgment says.

Thurston didn’t remedy the situation even after several abatement notices though he subsequently built a pipeline to the treatment plant 5 kilometres away, at a cost of $2.6 million.

The second set of charges related to Thurston’s Tawera Land Co., which owned a dairy farm at Boness Road, Fielding. An effluent sump had overflowed, covering about 3,000 sq. m of ponding. Thurston said the discharge had been a deliberate attempt to rehabilitate the soil though the effluent pond it was later diverted to was itself overflowing, according to later visits by officers.

(BusinessDesk)

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