Described as polluting for profit, a landowner was fined nearly $175,000 after pouring industrial waste into a local river. This after signing a lease where he agreed to accept responsibility for waste management from the property but then found that cost of disposal was exceeding the rent coming in.
The court was told the main problem concerned waste from a meat processing plant based at Longburn, near Palmerston North. The plant was leased to a Goodman Fielder subsidiary. The terms of the lease, which runs to 2035, required the landowner to bear the cost of waste removal. The landowner’s company received monthly rent of $12,300, but was having to pay between $20,000 and $30,000 per month to truck industrial waste to a treatment plant run by a local council.
Council staff became suspicious when deliveries to the treatment plant stopped. On investigation, council staff found raw waste was being dumped illegally into an old pipe leading to the
At council’s insistence, the landowner has had to build a five kilometre pipeline, at a cost of some $2.6 million, to transport waste direct to the local treatment plant.
In the District Court, the landowner and his company were convicted and fined for illegal waste discharges from both the Longburn plant and a dairy farm operated by the landowner personally.
On appeal, the High Court refused to reduce the fines.
Justice Miller described the case as a clear example of polluting for profit; the landowner was criticised for the calculated nature of the offending, the attempt to evade accountability by misleading council staff and failure to respond to abatement notices.
Thurston v. Manawatu-Wanganui Regional Council – High Court (27.08.10)
09.10.001