Fined $180k for ‘reckless offending’
Waikato meat processing plant
A Waikato meat processing plant has been fined for creating an odour described as ‘death mixed with a septic tank’ by neighbouring residents.
Claims of sabotage were not enough to prevent Tu¯ a¯ kau Proteins Limited (TPL) being fined $180,000 for polluting the Waikato River and discharging the offensive odours during the 2019 Christmas period. Following a prosecution by the Waikato District Council, the company pleaded guilty to three representative charges of contravening the provisions of the Resource Management Act.
In the sentence handed down in the Auckland District Court, Judge Melanie Harland described the companies actions as ‘‘reckless offending [which] had a significant and profound effect on the community nearby, in some cases causing people to be physically sick’’.
Thirteen witness statements described in vivid detail the effect the round-the-clock stench had on neighbours within 2km.
They described the smell as inescapable with windows and doors having to remain closed to prevent the smell of ‘‘stale water, rotten carcasses, a baby’s soiled nappy or raw sewage’’ soaking into the walls and carpets.
Speaking to Stuff, complainant Kerry Mosheim said the stench was particularly awful on Christmas and New Year’s Day.
‘‘It was unbearable . . . just absolutely disgusting.’’
Heather McGuire, of Enviroment Action Tu¯ akau, said after years of stink and empty promises of improvement by TPL, the community simply wanted the plant gone. The Lapwood Road plant was constructed in 1972 and sits 3km from the Tu¯ a¯ kau township on the bank of the Waikato River, rendering offal and blood from abattoirs to export as a meal product.
According to court documents the company’s four directors, Andrew Lowe, Phillip Hocquard, Glenn Smith and Stephen Dahlenburg have a history of related infringements.
However, while stench stretched back years, the charges heard by the court relate to an increase in both frequency and intensity of complaints in the six months between December 2019 and April 2020, when a power outage two days before Christmas caused the aerators in one of the plant’s three wastewater filtration ponds to stop working.
A WRC investigation found that with no aeration, within 24 hours the pond’s bacteria died, resulting in a sulphurous discharge described by neighbours as ‘‘strong rotten eggs’’ and ‘‘death mixed with a septic tank’’.
WRC prosecutor Nathan Speir told the court the cause of the summer stench was traced to an agreement, signed in November 2019, to take on an additional two hundred tonnes of offal per day, which resulted in a net profit of
$558,935 from October 2019 to March
2020, compared to a net loss of $639,954 in the same time last year.
In an interview with the WRC the plant’s temporary production manager at the time revealed he had concerns the ponds would not be able to handle the added strain, and a report by Dr Matthew Savage of Apex Engineering stated the wastewater pond was processing 20 per cent more than its designed capacity.
But according to defence counsel Brandon Watts, the extra waste dumped into the pond was not a result of negligence or malicious intent on the part of TPL. He submitted an investigation conducted by Pattle Delamore which concluded a dissatisfied driver had dumped his load of blood soaked offal without the company’s knowledge, and the security cameras at the plant weren’t positioned to record the mystery offender.
Judge Melanie Harland said she could not link the cause of the Christmas stench directly to the November contract, she was satisfied TPL had demonstrated a ‘‘reckless disregard’’ and ‘‘moderately high’’ culpability.