A discoloured Waiteti Stream.
A Bay of Plenty dairy farm business has been fined $40,000 after dairy effluent ended up in a culturally and ecologically significant stream which then flowed into Lake Rotorua.
Chlorofield Limited was sentenced in the Environment Court at Tauranga on Monday after it pleaded guilty to a charge of discharging dairy effluent on to land that may enter water.
The Bay of Plenty Regional Council prosecution relates to the defendant breaching the Resource Management Act by discharging dairy effluent from a travelling irrigation pipe on to land.
The effluent ponded in a paddock and flowed overland into the Waiteti Stream before entering Lake Rotorua about four kilometres downstream from the farm property.
Waiteti Stream has been identified by the council as a regionally significant trout habitat which also supports other freshwater species, as well as being a bathing site.
Chlorofield Ltd owns a 114-hectare dairy farm on Dalbeth Rd in Hamurana, about 3.5km west of Lake Rotorua.
The defendant was milking 260 cows twice daily on October 8 and 9 last year, when effluent from the cowshed was irrigated on to a paddock via a travelling irrigator.
The travelling irigator was not fitted correctly and the length of the drag hose was too short.
The effluent system on the travelling irrigator did not include any fail-safe or monitoring devices to detect failures in the irrigation system, the court heard.
There were also no checks made to ensure the irrigation system was working properly, and the illegal discharge into the stream was only identified after a complaint was made to the regional council.
The complainant contacted the council after they saw green and brown discolouration in the normally clear stream where there were no trout visible, and also provided a water sample to the council.
Two enforcement officers found ponding of the green-coloured effluent in the paddock, more than 10 millimetres deep in some places, on the farm.
Chlorofield’s resource consent allowed the discharge of effluent to pasture irrigation on the condition no effluent reached surface waters.
The trainee farm manager told one of the council inspectors she normally checked the irrigator, but had not done so that morning.
While spraying weeds that day, she had seen the travelling irrigator had pulled the too-short effluent drag hose apart from its camlock joint.
On October 28 last year, the officers found a farm director had updated the farm’s dairy effluent standing operating procedures to address the issues that led to the discharge.
Council prosecutor Hayley Sheridan told Judge Jeff Smith it was “moderately serious offending”, as at least 60 per cent (about 4.5 cubic metres) of the discharged effluent would have made it to the stream.
She said it would have caused a pulse of contaminants to travel from the stream to Lake Rotorua, with likely negative adverse effects on the stream, posing a risk to human health.
However, Sheridan said the offending was considered an act of carelessness.
Chlorofield’s lawyer Lara Burkhardt said her client was a relatively new farm operator and the offending was “not a case of a systemic failure of compliance”.
It could be distinguished from other cases where higher fines were imposed due to the short duration of the discharge and lack of prior offending, she said.
However, Judge Smith said it was a “significant failure” and “one of the more serious breaches he had come across” given the sensitivity of the environments impacted.
“I have said many times previously that effluent irrigators constantly fail, and [that] should be expected.
“The litany of cases before this court prove that they require not only constant supervision, but a series of fail-safe devices to try to mitigate the effects of any untoward discharges,” he said.
However, he found the impact of the discharge was “relatively limited” and recognised the defendant was a relatively new farm owner with no prior history of offending.
Judge Smith said a fine of $40,000 was appropriate, with 9 per cent to be paid to the regional council, and also ordered the defendant to pay $130 in court costs and $110 in solicitor costs.