Hawke's Bay Regional Council says everything was done "by the book" and legally fell within their guidelines.
A visit to the property left an inspector happy with what he saw - piles were burning hot with comparatively little smoke, the wind was blowing in a southerly direction away from Hastings and Havelock North - the orchardist was also on site. Attempts by Hawke's Bay Today to contact the landowner proved unsuccessful.
The Regional Plan allowed this kind of burning if it was part of orchard redevelopment.
"There's an exception for horticultural land, especially orchards," Wayne Wright of the Resource Management Group says. "One of the reasons orchards are allowed to burn is to burn diseased material, the other thing with orchard or vineyard redevelopment is if your pulling out trees and replanting them ... it doesn't happen that much."
While it was legal, Mr Graham still believed council needed to move away from allowing it to happen by making changes to policy.
"It has to be stopped - to make a new process we need to review how fruit growers burn their prunings and wood when they pull out trees. They are within their rights but it's still not right - many fruit growers hold the wood three to four months to let it dry out a bit or cut some up and mulch the rest."
He was simply angry that some landowners in Heretaunga still thought they had a right to, "irresponsibly and callously" risk endangering the health of their neighbours with the smoke from burning green wood.
His issue was with such large scale fires spewing huge amounts of potentially dangerous smoke in to the atmosphere - when the elderly and those trying to stay warm were prosecuted for the same thing.
"It's a huge double standard that we allow fruit growers and farmers to do it but little old ladies and poor people who just trying to stay warm can't."
From 2011, people living in urban areas of Hawke's Bay on a property fewer than 2ha in size, were prohibited from using an open fire. That included those installed after December 2008, when the rules changed. Consent must be granted before installing any fireplace to ensure it meets safety standards.
The Hawke's Bay regional Council offered one non-repayable loan for households to replace an existing non-compliant fire or wood burner.
Lesley Wilson, the president of the Hawke's Bay Fruit Growers Association said that for trees of this size mulching was not an option.
"They have to be burnt, especially any diseased trees and this is allowed under the HBRC air plan", Ms Wilson said.
- additional reporting,
Jonathan Dine
