New round in noise row
A long-running duel over noise between a Taranaki gun club and its neighbour could end up with a High Noon showdown in the environment court.
The New Plymouth Pistol Club and Bryan Phillips have been battling for more than a year after a line of trees between their properties, on State Highway 3 north of New Plymouth, was cut down.
Phillips claimed the trees had muffled the sound, and since then the noise of shooting was disrupting his family’s life and forcing him to wear earmuffs while gardening.
Now New Plymouth District Council (NPDC) has slapped the club with an abatement order, restricting the times members can carry out their hobby, after finding it had breached noise rules.
The club says it is prepared to take its case to the Environment Court.
Club president Mike O’sullivan said the site had been a gun range since the 1860s, when it was used by the Taranaki militia, and the club had been there since before the Resource Management Act (RMA) came in in 1991.
‘‘We’re protected under Section 10 of the RMA. We’re an existing entity and we have to comply with the rules of that, which we do.’’
The abatement notice says the club has not provided sufficient evidence that its operations come under pre-rma rights.
O’sullivan said they have no qualms with the council, who ‘‘just have a job to do’’.
‘‘The thing is, Bryan’s using them as a weapon against us.’’
The club says no one complained about noise before Phillips, who has been trespassed after climbing over the gun range wall when someone was shooting.
Phillips said the trespass is ‘‘basically void’’ because the club’s land runs through one of his paddocks.
Both sides accuse the other of wasting ratepayers’ money.
The council hired Marshall Day Acoustics to assess the noise level at the club on five separate occasions. All were above the 50-decibel noise limit set in the district plan.
O’sullivan said this limit was far too low and being broken by traffic passing on SH3.
The club has 180 members and the ranges are also used to adjust gun sights and by police, including the Armed Offenders Squad.
O’sullivan said they had put about $1.5m into the property, and a new one elsewhere would cost millions.
If the range was unable to operate there would be big knockon effects, he said.
‘‘Everyone will lose their licences because they can’t perform the 12 shoots a year we have to do by law, and the police will have nowhere to go in Taranaki.
‘‘We sympathise with him with the noise, but you can live there knowing that the noise is there. The noise has not increased.’’
The abatement notice limits shooting to Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays between 9am and 4pm, Thursdays between
5pm-8pm, and Sundays 10am4pm. Two events are allowed to be held outside these times.
Phillips, who has lived next to the club since 2018, said they were a ‘‘law unto themselves’’.
‘‘They know that the noise that they generate is above the Resource Management Act, but they still continue doing it.
‘‘I’d like to see them either put something in physically to reduce the noise substantially or just bugger off.’’
The council had been working with the club and neighbours for several months to find a solution to satisfy everyone, group manager planning and infrastructure Kevin Strongman said.
‘‘We had an independent noise expert measure noise from the club, and they found it exceeded standards in our district plan.
‘‘The abatement notice sets out a series of actions the club needs to take over the coming months and includes limiting shooting to certain hours and certain days, which we will be actively monitoring.’’
Strongman said the council would ask the club to meet the standards by December 5, and if it wanted to operate outside the noise limits it would have to apply for a resource consent.
‘‘We recognise the club has a long history at the site, but we have to strike a balance between its activities and reasonable noise levels for neighbours.’’