Dairy farm manager fined $60,000 for effluent offences

A Southland dairy farm manager, described as having a "quite belligerent" attitude, has been fined $60,000 for effluent offending.

Kevin Belling, of Waituna, and his wife, Rhonda Raymond-Williams, were convicted and fined when they appeared in the Invercargill District Court last week for four breaches of the Resource Management Act. The offending occurred last September and October.

Two charges related to separate incidents where dairy effluent had ponded on their property after being sprayed from a travelling irrigator, and might have entered a watercourse.

Another related to sludge and effluent from a concrete race flowing through a hole in a wall into a ditch, which fed into a tributary of the Waituna Stream.

The fourth charge concerned dead cows being dumped in a hole in circumstances where they would have contaminated groundwater.

Judge Jane Borthwick fined Belling a total of $60,000 - $20,00 and $25,000 on the charges relating to the irrigator and $7500 on each of the other two charges - plus court costs.

Raymond-Williams, who owned the property and held the resource consent for discharging effluent, was fined $1500, plus costs, on each charge, a statement from Environment Southland said.

Environment Southland's counsel, Barry Slowley, said the property was found to be significantly non-compliant on five out of seven inspections, and had achieved a "marginal pass" on the other two occasions.

The experienced compliance officer, who inspected the property in September and October, commented the environmental state of the property was one of the worst, if not the worst, he had seen in Southland, Mr Slowley told the court.

Belling's attitude during the two inspections was "quite belligerent" and he did not appear to accept the likely impact of his farming practices on the environment.

He appeared to believe he could discharge effluent to land in any quantity and by any means as long as it did not affect surface water.

Belling told the court he accepted, in hindsight, management practices had been risky, but submitted the farm's effluent system complied with the conditions imposed on the resource consent when it was granted in 1994.

He said Environment Southland should have required them to upgrade their infrastructure and put in more storage when the consent was renewed in 2005.

Judge Borthwick said the consent conditions for effluent storage were a minimum, not a maximum. The succession of poor results from inspections should have made the couple realise their system was inadequate, she said.