Opinion: 'It's hard to overstate the significance of these sentences'

Penny Gaylor.

Weekly column by Kāpiti's Greater Wellington Regional Council representative Penny Gaylor.

It's not often I'd publicly comment as a councillor about someone being sentenced to jail, but you'll understand why I'm making an exception in this column.

A couple of weeks ago, despite pleading not guilty, two people were convicted and sentenced on charges amounting to doing significant damage to wetlands in Kāpiti.

One — who did the offending work — was given a sentence of three months' imprisonment, the other — who allowed it to be carried out on her property — was fined $118,750.

Both have to restore the damaged areas.

It's hard to overstate the significance of these sentences.

While fines are not uncommon, this is high.

But the custodial sentence, which we argued for in court, is extremely rare.

Given the level, and repeated nature, of the offending and decisions by the pair to ignore our demands to cease work, we felt it was important to call out unacceptable behaviour and ask the judge to mark it with a tough sentence.

To his credit that's what Judge Dwyer did.

As a result, two clear conclusions should be drawn from the episode: damaging our wetlands (or any other protected area under our jurisdiction) will not be tolerated; we will seriously consider prosecuting those who do.

In this case each of the defendants faced 35 charges, which included reclaiming areas of wetland, draining water from wetlands, allowing livestock to damage wetlands, breaching abatement notices and breaching an interim enforcement order relating to a sewage disposal system.

Our approach to regulation has traditionally been to educate people to foster long term positive behaviour.

In fact, the charges followed real efforts on our behalf to work together to cease the offending and protect the environment, but our attempt to turn the defendants around amounted to nothing.

Despite reminding them time after time, verbally and in writing, of their legal obligations they were, in the words of Judge Dwyer "aggressively defiant of the council and the court".

Prosecution was appropriate and ultimately successful.

Some may say that this is a bit heavy-handed, but the merest consideration of what's at risk puts matters in context.

The judge commented in his judgment that the protection of natural wetlands is a matter of national importance; wetlands have significant ecological importance for their functions of improving water quality, reducing the impact of flooding and providing habitat for flora and fauna.

This view is gradually gaining traction as new rules on wetland and protecting our streams and rivers are implemented.

Greater Wellington's land management teams, which work with landowners on enlightened management of these precious resources, report widespread understanding of the importance of these taonga, and generally co-operation to match.

So it's disappointing to have to take costly and prolonged action over three years to find and remove the bad apples.

But where required, that's exactly what we will do.

This is the second successful prosecution case the council has concluded in the last month.

Where serious non-compliance occurs we will investigate and will not hesitate to prosecute where circumstances warrant.

Let's hope it doesn't have to happen too often.