Drawing water from a bore without a resource consent has cost a Mid Canterbury farmer $12,000 in fines and costs.
Keith Bruce Townshend, of Eiffelton, 17km southwest of Ashburton, had applied to take water from a bore on his property but Canterbury regional council Environment Canterbury (ECan) hadnot granted consent, the Environment Court was told last week.
An ECan environmental protection officer noticed the illegal water take when monitoring Townshend's dairy effluent discharge consent last March.
A sharemilker on Townshend's property also pleaded guilty to the same charge but was discharged without conviction and ordered to pay $2500 to ECan.
Environment Court Judge Jeff Smith said the sharemilker was discharged without conviction because of his "full cooperation and honesty, lesser culpability, remorse, good character and his early guilty plea".
Judge Smith said the sharemilker's "unique personal circumstances" would have made the consequences of a conviction too severe.
He directed that the fines be used by ECan to educate young farmers on the seriousness of such offending and the need to adhere strictly to resource consent conditions.
ECan said Townshend's consent application was being processed with a number of other groundwater applications in a zone classified as "red," or assessed by ECan water scientists as 100 per cent allocated.
