The Northland Regional Council is reviewing its prosecution methods after a judge threw out a costly court case over a large oil spill which just missed the Poor Knights Islands.
In a reserved decision released recently, Environment Court Judge Gordon Whiting refused to accept the sample analysis findings of an expert
prosecution witness who matched a sample taken from the sea to one taken from the engine room of the MV Eastern Forest.
The NRC laid charges against the Hong Kong-registered log and bulk carrier after an oil and bilge water discharge into the sea between the Tutukaka Coast and the Poor Knights Islands on March 25 last year.
The council said it was sheer "luck" that the slick - between four and six kilometres long and more than 500m wide - had missed the Poor Knights Islands.
Charges had subsequently been laid against the MV Eastern Forest's captain, Zhao Hong Qiang, its owner, Pacific Basin Bulka Corporation and Wallem Shipmanagement Ltd, the company that manages the vessel.
All three defendants were charged under the Resource Management Act with discharging a harmful substance to sea. They had all also faced alternative charges under the Maritime Transport Act of failing to give notice of a discharge and the resulting pollution.
The defendants had denied discharging any harmful substance or that there had been an event "involving the probable discharge or an escape into the sea of a harmful substance".
The case was heard over four days in February in Whangarei and continued at Auckland on March 27 with the NRC estimating the weeks of investigations and the trial itself had cost the council in excess of $10,000..
However, in his decision, released recently, Judge Whiting rejected the NRC's case against the MV Eastern Forest on technical grounds linked to the matching of samples from the spill with others from the ship. The argument over the testing was complex but in a nutshell, Judge Whiting considered there was insufficient evidence to prove the ship was responsible for the spill beyond reasonable doubt.
NRC monitoring manager Tony Phipps said the NRC was reviewing its sample analysis techniques in the wake of the loss.
- NORTHERN ADVOCATE
