Outrage at tyre-dumping penalty

By WAYNE THOMPSON

Environmentalist Graeme Platt is angry at the sentence handed down to a man caught unloading used tyres on his property.

Last year, a rubber mountain of up to 8000 illegally dumped tyres was formed on his disused nursery beside the Albany Highway and the Upper Harbour Drive.

The heap built up in the secluded spot over five months while Mr Platt was in Peru advising on afforestation.

In October, with the help of a posse of neighbours, he staked out the nursery. They caught men unloading a truck full of tyres, took photographs and called police.

But Mr Platt is outraged by the penalty handed down to one of the men, who admitted adding 250 tyres to the pile.

In the North Shore District Court on Thursday, Nicholas Miller Eadie, 43, whose business is disposing of old tyres, escaped conviction on condition that he remove the 250 tyres and pay Mr Platt $100 reparation.

Eadie had pleaded guilty to depositing litter on private property at Mr Platt's disused tree nursery on the Albany Highway.

Eadie told the court he was driving along the highway with a load of tyres, when somebody stopped him and said they wanted the tyres and would show him where to dump them.

He did so, instead of taking the tyres to his usual dump in West Auckland.

Eadie said he later learned that the unidentified person had no authority for the dumping.

He told the court he retrieved the 250 tyres he put on the pile, which, police estimated, contained 5500.



Mr Platt said he would refuse to accept the $100 reparation that Judge Nicola Mathers ordered Eadie to pay. "It's an insult when the cheapest quote I have for removing the dump is $8500."

The North Shore City Council had threatened to prosecute him under the Resource Management Act if he did not remove the tyres by January 31.

He refused and the council did not carry out its threat.

Mr Platt said that he was angry that the police had chosen to prosecute Eadie under the Litter Act, which carries a maximum penalty of $500.

He had asked the council to instead prosecute under the Resource Management Act, where acts of pollution carry fines of a maximum of $200,000.

The authorities' reaction to the problem was "the last straw" in a string of unsatisfactory dealings with officialdom.

"New Zealand is a filthy, moral-less rat-hole.

"We crow about how clean and green it is, yet if everybody behaved like New Zealanders there would be no planet left."

The council's environmental protection manager, John McEwing, said the council was frightened of an environmental disaster if the pile of tyres caught fire.

But it was sympathetic towards Mr Platt because it realised he was caught up in a problem that was not of his making.

The council could not have prosecuted the tyre-dumper because dumping occurred on private property.

It was a criminal offence which had to be handled by the police.

However, under the Resource Management Act, removal of the tyres was the landowner's responsibility.

Any move to force Mr Platt to remove the tyres was on hold, Mr McEwing said.

But the council could not remove them at ratepayers' expense because it set a precedent for any further cases of illegal dumping.

Ideally, residents would promptly report any dumping they might suspect was unauthorised.