Farmer gave officers false name
A farmer who gave a false name to Environment Southland staff who were inspecting an effluent spill on his farm has been fined.
At the council’s regulatory committee meeting, councillors discussed the case after environmental compliance manager Simon Mapp listed it in an environmental compliance division report.
Court sentencing notes regarding the council’s prosecution against Gregory Paul Deal and Rangiatea Farms in the Invercargill District Court on August 6 were included in the agenda.
Deal and the company each admitted one charge of permitting a discharge of dairy farm effluent to land in circumstances in which the contaminant might have entered water.
Deal also admitted contravening the Resource Management Act by failing to provide his full and correct name to a council officer.
In the notes, Judge PB Dwyer said Rangiatea Farms owned a dairy farm near Wyndham and had a consent to discharge effluent from 350 cows to a specified land disposal area.
On October 3, last year, two council officers went to the farm after receiving a complaint about an ongoing effluent spill down a hillside on a farm.
They could not see the spill and went to the farmhouse, where the person, who the judge says was Deal, gave another name, and kept up that pretence with the officers throughout their visit. He emailed the council the next day to confess he had given false details.
Judge Dwyer said he understood there might have been an ‘‘element of panic’’ when the council inspectors turned up but the offending was deliberate and part of a pattern of misleading conduct Deal undertook to try to keep the officers away from the offending area of the farm.
The notes say Deal went with the officers when they went to inspect the area where they had seen the irrigation ponds but ‘‘it seems from the summary of facts you diverted them away from that area and eventually went back to the house with them.’’
The officers then undertook an unaccompanied inspection of the farm and found a disconnected hydrant on top of a hill and effluent that was ponded at the top of the hill flowing down the hill in a strip they described as being about 20m wide. They found a build-up of sludge and effluent at the confluence of two streams and a backup of effluent extending about 400m upstream.
The judge found that the discharge would be seriously detrimental to any aquatic life in the creek or to stock or humans that came into contact with it.
Deal blamed the discharges on his father, who was temporarily working on the farm at the time.
The judge fined Deal and Rangiatea Farms $21,375 each for the effluent leak and Deal was fined $1425 for giving false details.
Ninety per cent of the fines were to be paid to the Southland Regional Council.
They found a build-up of sludge and effluent at the confluence of two streams and a backup of effluent extending about 400m upstream.