Enforcement action suspended against Te Mata Mushrooms

PONG: Te Mata Mushroom's current consent prohibits odours from leaving the Havelock North property. Photo / File

Despite daily odour complaints and $3000 in outstanding fines, enforcement action against Te Mata Mushrooms has been suspended in light of its stalled new resource consent.

For years, the Havelock North company has been blamed by nearby residents for foul odour issues.

Last year the Environment Court fined it $15,000 and issued an enforcement order for a new resource consent, which would include conditions addressing odour issues.

This was lodged last December, but at a Hawke's Bay Regional Council meeting yesterday chief executive James Palmer said it was unlikely a consent could be processed until next year.

Te Mata Mushrooms had to undertake traffic and noise studies through an independent consultant before consent could be approved. These reports were not expected to be filed until next month.

"So we are frustrated but as far as we can tell, the company is doing everything it can to get that consent finalised and lodged," Mr Palmer said.

In the meantime the council was receiving near-daily complaints about odour - 320 since the Environment Court decision, with 51 received since November 1.

HBRC compliance staff had issued three $1000 infringement notices across just one week in October - which were still outstanding.

"Clearly it's an intolerable situation for the local residents in respect of the odour at present, but the only resolution of that will come from redevelopment of the operation," Mr Palmer said.

As there was nothing practical the company could do until then, Mr Palmer said he had decided to suspend any further enforcement action against the company.

"This is open for review at any time, and if there's any sense the company is not doing everything it can to advance its plans to ... resolve the issue, then we will reinstigate our enforcement action."

Yesterday Te Mata Mushrooms owner Michael Whittaker said the consent process was taking longer than expected, but was the pragmatic way forward "for what's a difficult situation for all those involved, whether you be a resident, the regional council or us here at the mushroom farm".

He added the council decision to suspend enforcement action was sensible, "because at the end of the day we've put forward a solution but we can't implement that solution until it's either approved or declined".

"For us it seemed a little unfair continuing to be fined, when we've done everything that we can to get to this point."

At the meeting councillor Peter Beaven said there had been concerns in the local community that the consent application "has been used to put the whole matter into a holding pattern to the detriment of the local community".

The new consent application outlines plans to spend up to $850,000 on upgrades in increasing compost production from 120 tonnes a week to 200 tonnes. A second stage could see an even greater investment as production is stepped up to as much as 500 tonnes.

Submissions on it closed in June.