Gold mining firm fined for digging up stream
A gold mining boss claimed a lack of understanding contributed to his firm illegally excavating a West Coast stream bed.
Environment Court Judge Craig Thompson did not accept this, fining Crescent Creations $17,000.
He said: ‘‘If the company did not understand the resource consent, then it is the defendant’s problem and nobody else’s.’’
The West Coast Regional Council discovered the excavation in the Waimea Stream, which is between Greymouth and Hokitika, in February 2016. The resource consent issued to the company allowed excavation only on the dry riverbed or the floodplain.
Company director Yang Wang was there when the digger operator dug up nearly 290 metres of the stream bed, forming a wall alongside.
A flood soon after filled it in again, but the excavation would have made the riverbed more porous and exacerbated the loss of water flow, the judge said.
Crescent Creations pleaded guilty to a charge of breaching its resource consent. The offence carries a maximum penalty of a $600,000 fine.
Council prosecutor Heather McKenzie said the company was issued a series of infringement notices and an abatement notice about other matters in the year before the excavation.
Meanwhile, Wang was continuing gold mining operations with another company, Gold River Mining, at Waimea Creek and Kumara.
Crescent Creations’ lawyer, Hans van der Wal, said Wang ‘‘genuinely did not know he wasn’t authorised under the consent to do these particular works’’.
There was no evidence Wang understood the consent or deliberately breached it, he said.
Wang did not own the company when the consent was issued and there were difficulties about language, he said. Wang, who is Chinese, had an interpreter in court. ‘‘The consent leaves a lot of room for confusion,’’ Van der Wal said.
‘‘There is no evidence that there was any real, significant adverse effect on either the base line flows, or the water quality downstream.‘‘
Judge Thompson said the work was deliberate, even if the damage was unintentional.
He noted defence submissions acknowledged company management ‘‘simply did not do enough to ensure compliance’’.
McKenzie said the company complied with the investigation and did immediate rehabilitation work.