Trio sentenced for massive tyre dump

Father and daughter Alan and Angela Merrie and their business partner Jonathon Spencer were sentenced in the Tauranga District Court on Wednesday. Photo / NZME

Three people behind a failed tyre recycling venture that resulted in more than 1200 tonnes of old tyres being dumped at Kawerau have been ordered to pay more than $100,000 in fines and reparation.

Father and daughter Alan and Angela Merrie and their business partner Jonathon Spencer were sentenced in the Tauranga District Court yesterday for contravening an enforcement order under the Resource Management Act.

The Merries were each sentenced to 190 hours of community work and were ordered to pay $25,000 each towards costs incurred by the Bay of Plenty Regional Council.

The father and daughter had sought discharge without conviction.

Through his lawyer, Spencer told Judge Prudence Steven he would be unable to complete a community work sentence as he was caring for an ill family member.

He asked that he be fined instead. Spencer was fined $29,750 and was ordered to pay $25,000 costs to the council.

Regional council lawyers asked Judge Steven to order the fines be paid within six months.

However, the lawyers for Spencer and the Merries argued that the proposed timeframe was "unreasonable, unrealistic" and set the trio up for failure.

Judge Steven did not impose a timeframe. The sentencing ended a six-year legal saga that began after the trio launched a tyre recycling venture in 2014.

They began collecting tyres despite having no funds or means with which to recycle them and ended up stockpiling them in yards at Kawerau and Waihi.

The regional council issued notices to the trio to stop dumping tyres and move them to an authorised landfill or storage facility.

The three were convicted in 2018 of contravening the abatement notice and then failed to remove the tyres by the court-imposed date.

Tyres were a risk to the environment through the leaching of contaminants into the ground and waterways and posed the risk of a serious fire as they caught alight easily, burned hot, and were hard to put out.

The Kawerau tyres were eventually removed by landowner Jason Hubbard at a cost to himself of more than $100,000.

Hubbard had received $4000 from Spencer for what he thought would be short-term storage of the tyres.

He then received $25,000 from Spencer towards the cost of removing the tyres but received nothing from the Merries.

Judge Steven said Hubbard's actions were a "display of environmentally responsible stewardship that was not apparent in the more recent actions of any of the defendants, despite setting out with good intentions".

When sentencing the Merries, Judge Steven said the father and daughter made "little or no effort" to achieve compliance with the order.

She said the convictions would be a "black mark" against their reputation and that it might affect their business opportunities in the future.

However, Judge Steven said this was a "proportionate consequence" of a second conviction for the Merries.