Pain Farm in Martinborough is the proposed site for a wastewater disposal facility.
Pain Farm in Martinborough is the proposed site for a wastewater disposal facility.
South Wairarapa District Council has been accused of breaching its duties as a trustee of the Pain Farm.
At a Wairarapa Combined District Plan hearing on Monday, submitters pushed back on the council’s request to designate the gifted farmland for the operation, maintenance and improvement of a wastewater disposal facility.
One submitter described the farm as a “golden goose for children” of Martinborough and said they did not want the council to use it as a dumping site for the town’s treated wastewater.
By law, for a designation to be granted, the council should give adequate consideration to alternative sites, routes or methods of undertaking the work “if the requiring authority does not have an interest in the land sufficient for undertaking the work”.
The planner who spoke on behalf of the council argued that because the council “owned” the land and had a resource consent, consideration of alternative sites, routes or methods was not considered necessary.
But submitter Alison Clements said the council’s resource consent, granted by the Greater Wellington Regional Council in 2016, was “not worth the paper it’s written on”.
“South Wairarapa District Council does not ‘own’ Pain Farm, and it has no right to use the land as though it were a council asset to be used for council purposes.
“It holds the Pain Farm land but it does not own it. It is the trustee.”
The Pain Farm was bequeathed to the former Martinborough Borough Council by George Pain in 1932 to be used as “a sports ground for the residents of Martinborough and as a playground for the children”.
A 1966 court order meant income generated from the land could be used to fund park, sport and recreation activities in Martinborough.
It is currently operating as a farm and is the site of the Martinborough Transfer Station.
Clements said the council had a legal duty to operate the trust “strictly in accordance with the trust terms; and for the sole benefit of the trust’s beneficiaries”.
“A trustee must not use trust assets for self-use. That would be a conflict of interest, as well as a violation of the terms of the trust and of the law.”
She said George Pain’s desire for the land to be a sportsground and a playground for children “could not be further away from the council’s proposal to use the land as a place to distribute wastewater”.
Submitter Jenny Boyne says Pain Farm is “a highly productive, money-maker, working farm“.
She asked the independent commissioner, David McMahon, to reject the proposed designation.
McMahon said it was not within his jurisdiction to rule on trust matters but asked the council to come back with clarity on whether it had “an interest in the land sufficient for undertaking the work” as per the Resource Management Act.
He suggested the council “volunteer” some conditions of the designation and further justify why a designation was needed to “authorise works over and above what is already authorised by the regional council consent”.
Any ability to implement a consent would depend on land ownership matters being resolved, he said.
Submitter Jenny Boyne, who spoke on behalf of her mum, Beverley Clark, said the Pain Farm was the “golden goose for the children of Martinborough”.
If the land was to become “a disposal field for the town’s waste, the income from the land would be slashed as the land will not be sought after for cropping or finishing livestock for export”.
She said an alternative solution to using the Pain Farm land was that the council could call for expressions of interest from other landowners “if they would like to use the treated wastewater to irrigate their gardens or green spaces”, or to pipe the treated wastewater to irrigate the Martinborough Golf Club.
“My mum lives directly across the road from Pain Farm and has lived there for 26 years and in the Martinborough Ward for 66 years and is prepared to make a stand and say, ‘not in my backyard’.”
Decisions on designations would be made at a later date.
South Wairarapa District Council has been approached for comment.
