Polluters pay heavy price

A Taranaki farming couple have been fined and a regional council candidate fined and given community service on pollution charges.

Rahotu dairy farmers Francis John Mullan and his wife Jennifer Ann, and Bruce Gordon Cudby, were sentenced in the Environment Court at New Plymouth on Tuesday for breaches of the Resource Management Act.

The Mullans were fined $25,000 for dairy effluent discharges into a stream, and Cudby got 300 hours of community service and a $2500 fine.

Cudby admitted breaching an enforcement order and discharging contaminants from his South Taranaki clean-fill dump.

Judge Craig Thompson strongly criticised both parties. "The dairy industry must accept it must conduct itself in an environmentally sensible way," he said. "The message does not seem to be getting through that this is not acceptable in the 21st century."

Judge Thompson said the charge against the Mullans involved effluent flowing 80m into a drain then into a stream - sufficient to cause acute and chronic levels of pollution of the receiving waters.

This was despite the couple having been served two abatement notices and an infringement notice over the preceding two years.

Judge Thompson told Cudby his business, which started as an approved clean fill at Hawera, had been a complete disaster. He was told if he or the company had been in anything like a sound financial position, he would have been facing a much bigger fine.

Cudby announced last week that he was standing for the Taranaki Regional Council, which had brought the prosecution against him.

- NZPA