The fines, less 10%, will be paid to Gisborne District Council, which identified the offending relevant to the charges during an inspection in April and May 2022 after significant rain in March 2022.
Both companies will also pay court costs of $130 and solicitor fees of $113 on each charge.
The charges relate to a commercial pine harvesting operation at Samnic Forest located on Tuahu Rd, Tauwhāreparae, about 45km north of Gisborne, between April 2021 and April 2022.
The agreed summary of facts said poor management led to discharges of slash, logging debris, waste logging material and/or sediment to watercourses after significant rain events.
Samnic engaged a roading contractor (which is not before the court) to build an unconsented road and skid site in July and August 2021.
A State of Emergency was declared in March 2022 because of significant rain events.
Parts of the forest suffered moderate damage, including slip erosion from slope failures, compounded by windthrow and logging waste material present on some slopes.
In some areas, there were failures of “bird nests” of logging slash on the sites of skid sites on top of various steep slopes which can be very destructive when woody material is discharged into the turbulent flow of water.
Gisborne District Council had raised issues with one or both defendants about poor harvesting practices and contraventions of consent conditions between April 2021 and April 2022.
Adam Hopkinson, acting for the council, said the offending involved a high degree of carelessness.
Both defendants were responsible for the manner in which the harvest was undertaken and therefore with ensuring compliance with the conditions of the resource consents, which had been imposed to avoid or mitigate adverse effects of their activities on the environment.
The defendants were aware that it was a high-risk environment in terms of both its classification as being highly erodible land and its history of storms resulting in mobilisation of slash in watercourses, and a vulnerable environment in terms of the protected watercourses in this forest.
The offending involved a number of contraventions of consent conditions and did not accord with relevant forestry industry standards for earthworks and harvesting, Hopkinson said.
Judge Kirkpatrick set a starting point of a $130,000 fine for Samnic but said the position of Forest Management was more complicated.
The judge said he was concerned by the “role of third parties who would appear to have greater culpability, but who were not before the court”.
“While Forest Management Solutions plainly is culpable for its failures in managing the operations, as it was contracted to do, the problems left by the roading contractor clearly compounded the issue.”
Allowing for that “consideration”, he set a starting point of $50,000 for Forest Management Solutions.
The discounts for both companies were the same, 25% cent for the guilty pleas and the consideration of amendments to the charges, or the number of them, and 5% for good character and co-operation with the council.
