A Waiareka Valley dairy farm company is disputing how often effluent leaked from a storage sump on its Elderslie property and will have to come back to the Environment Court for a second time to produce evidence.
Yesterday, Judge Jane Borthwick remanded Elderslie Dairy Farms Ltd and farm manager Andrew Mark Jefferies (46) to September 23 for a hearing on facts surrounding a spill which occurred between October 9 and 23 last year.
They were jointly charged with discharging dairy herd effluent on to land in circumstances which might result in contaminants entering water in a farm drain and the Waiareka Creek.
After considering answers to questions and submission from Ngaire Alexander for the defendants and Alastair Logan for the Otago Regional Council, Judge Borthwick was left with an issue as to how many times spills may have occurred.
Elderslie Dairy Farms maintained spills were not an ongoing issue and what occurred in October was "a one-off discharge as a result of system failure", Miss Alexander said.
However, Mr Logan said council's inspection officer Eryn Duffy reported that Mr Jefferies told her in October there had been issues with the system and an ongoing problem.
Judge Borthwick, pointing to the discrepancy, said if Mr Jefferies was saying the spill was a one-off then a hearing would be needed to establish what was said about the discharge and whether it had occurred on previous occasions.
Evidence would need to be given by Mr Jefferies and Mrs Duffy.
The dairy farm company and Mr Jefferies had both admitted the charges.
Dairy effluent on the property went into a sump which had a pump, activated by a float switch, that pumped to a travelling irrigator which sprayed it on to land.
The spill from the sump occurred when the switch was blocked by faecal matter and effluent overflowed on to land.
Miss Alexander said the company regularly inspected the effluent disposal system to ensure it was working, but had failed to do so on the day the sump over-flowed because of other things happening on the farm.
The defendants viewed the spill very seriously.
Since then, the company had added to and improved its effluent disposal system with two new holding ponds.
That was not a result of the spill and had been planned before that had happened, she said.
