A Wanaka surveying and planning company has been taken to court by the Otago Regional Council for taking and diverting water without a resource consent.
The case began in the Dunedin District Court yesterday in front of Judge Brian Dwyer.
The two charges against Paterson Pitts Wanaka Ltd relate to a site known as Golf Side, in Tenby St, Wanaka, the proposed site for an apartment block.
Paterson Pitts and Tonkin and Taylor were engaged to carry out geotechnical investigations on the site.
During those investigations an aquifer was breached and a bore installed on site, for which retrospective consent was granted.
Otago Regional Council counsel Alastair Logan said the defendant had connected a pipe with a tap and flow meter to the bore and monitored the flows and drawdown levels.
Information provided to the council showed the groundwater taken exceeded volumes allowed by the permitted activity rule in the Regional Plan: Water for Otago from April 18 to May 9, 2008.
The groundwater taken was discharged into a stormwater system and released into Bullock Creek, he said.
"This abstraction or diversion of water by the defendant is the subject of two charges."
Paterson Pitts had contended the valve was set for the maximum allowable 30,000 litres per day and that a third party must have tampered with the valve to increase the take, which it considered constituted sabotage.
Paterson Pitts counsel Phil Page asked regional council witness David Kane, a neighbour of Golf Side, if he had tampered with the valve when he entered the property to take water meter readings.
Mr Cain said he had not and neither had any of the other neighbours, who also opposed the apartment block development.
The case continues today.
