Council prepares for court action

A transport company is also facing scrutiny

Environment Southland is hauling numerous farmers and companies before the courts on a raft of alleged environmental offences.

A report by compliance manager Simon Mapp says there have been eight sets of charges laid in the district court, with all matters set down for a first appearance in May.

The regional council, yesterday, did not provide names of the companies and individuals facing the charges.

However, Mapp summarises the cases the regional council is prosecuting in his report to councillors at yesterday’s regulatory committee meeting.

These include an ‘‘industrial development’’, which allegedly removed contaminated land from a site in Invercargill and deposited the contaminated land into a cleanfill site.

Eight individuals and companies had been identified as parties to that alleged offending, Mapp’s report says.

Also, a Southland farmer faces three charges in relation to various discharges relating to silage and effluent.

One charge has been laid against a company in charge of a Southland farm, which had an overflowing dairy effluent pond, with evidence indicating the effluent affected a waterway.

A company and farm worker face charges after a farm worker extended a farm drain through a sensitive Department of Conservation wetland area.

Three charges have been laid against a company in charge of a farm where paddocks were ‘‘over irrigated’’, resulting in discharges to two different waterways.

The trust in charge of a farm, and the person in charge of operations, face charges after an overflowing sump on a Southland farm entered a waterway.

Charges have also been laid against two companies and the person in charge of operations on a farm where ‘‘a Southland farmer had over irrigated a paddock that entered a waterway’’.

Also, a number of charges have been laid against the owner of three properties after there had been various discharges of effluent over the three farms. A transport company is also facing scrutiny.

‘‘An enforcement order has been issued to a Southland transport company to lawfully dispose of animal by-products which were stored on its property and created leachate that was entering a waterway; and to dispose of the same material that had been spread over neighbouring paddocks,’’ Mapp’s report says.