Meat processor pays for illegal waste discharge

Fresh Meats NZ Ltd, which processes over 200,000 lambs a year at its plant in Mersey St, Pandora, pleaded guilty last week. Photo / Paul Taylor.

A meat processor has been ordered to pay $3600 in investigation expenses plus Hawke's Bay Regional Council's legal costs after admitting unlawfully discharging waste into a Napier stormwater system which flowed into the Ahuriri Estuary.

Fresh Meats NZ Ltd, which processes more than 200,000 lambs a year at its plant in Mersey St, Pandora, pleaded guilty last week and the sentence was imposed in the Environment Court yesterday.

According to a summary the discharge from the plant in Mersey St, Pandora, happened on the afternoon of September 26 last year, was reported to the Hawke's Bay Regional Council by Napier City Council staff who had seen Fresh Meats employees washing wastewater into the roadside drainage system.

A city council officer also noticed discharge through the system into the Tyne St drain, which then flowed into the Ahuriri Estuary.

Employees were still hosing wastewater when Regional Council officers arrived about 50 minutes later, and the process was stopped immediately, with a containment gate on the Tyne St drain being "dropped" to prevent any "further" contamination of the estuary.

The summary said contaminated water captured within the Tyne St drain was sucked out and pumped into the Napier sewage network as a means of disposal.