Culprits fined, convicted again
It’s home to long-finned eels and the longjaw galaxiid, but that didn’t stop a contractor digging up 500 metres of a North Otago waterway.
MFS Ventures Ltd and its director, Gregory Keith Nelson, pleaded guilty to a charge of breaching the Resource Management Act by disturbing the bed of a tributary of the Kakanui River.
Both were convicted and each fined $8250, at a hearing held the Dunedin District Court last week.
The firm and Nelson have a history of environmental breaches. In 2011, they were convicted of discharging dairy effluent, and last year pleaded guilty to two charges each for illegally disturbing the bed of Sisters Creek in Canterbury and discharging sediment into the Hakataramea River.
A judgment released yesterday by Judge Brian Dwyer said the farm was used to graze dairy cattle and, on April 12, 2017, a contractor was employed to excavate an unnamed tributary of the Kakanui River.
A day later the Otago Regional Council received a complaint that a digger was operating in the tributary.
An enforcement officer found 500m of the tributary had been excavated.
The director advised the work was to remove material accumulated as a result of earlier storm events. This removal is allowed on the condition alluvium is not removed. But the court heard that cobble bed alluvium was removed, and so required resource consent.
Judge Dwyer noted photographs showed weeds and vegetation were also removed. The Kakanui River and its tributaries are a habitat for a ‘‘significant population of long finned eels’’ and the longjaw galaxiid.
While the defendants’ counsel argued that her clients thought they were doing permitted work, anything ‘‘involving a length of stream something like 500m, is likely to attract the attention of the regional council’’, Judge Dwyer said.
All that was needed was a call to the council, he said. ‘‘I accept that this is not the worst case of offending by any stretch of imagination but I make the point it is not trivial offending either.’’