A landscaping firm in Tasman has been fined $144,375 after admitting a set of charges linked to runoff from a storage pond seeping contaminants into nearby waterways.
A landscaping firm in Tasman has been fined $144,375 after admitting a set of charges linked to runoff from a storage pond seeping contaminants into nearby waterways.
Azwood Ltd was convicted and fined $144,375 for allowing contaminant from its compost operation to seep into nearby streams.
Directors Fergus and Brook Brewerton also pleaded guilty to charges laid by the Tasman District Council.
Judge Brian Dwyer cited significant management failures but discharged the directors without conviction.
A black substance that smelled like rotten eggs was the first clue that led to a landscaping company being fined $144,375 after runoff from its compost-making operation seeped into nearby streams.
The compound of green waste, plus animal and processed fish manure that seeped from a storage pond was later found to be the cause of “prolific growth of sewage fungus” along an extended length of the Eves Valley Stream in Tasman.
It was also responsible for localised pollution of groundwater, scientists discovered, in areas bounding the Waimea Plains, which is a major food-growing area of the Tasman district.
When authorities couldn’t trace the source following an initial complaint from the public they followed their noses to a storage pond on the property of wholesale landscaping business Azwood Ltd.
An evidence photograph of polluted waterways in the Waimea Plains submitted to the Nelson District Court.
The company and its directors, father and son, Fergus and Brook Brewerton eventually pleaded guilty to 21 charges brought by the Tasman District Council for various breaches of the Resource Management Act.
Eighteen of the 21 charges were linked to the discharge incidents themselves, and the remainder were for breaches of an abatement notice.
The company has now been convicted and fined a total of $144,375 or $28,875 for each of the five charges linked to it discharging contaminated water from a storage pond.
In the Nelson District Court, it was convicted and discharged on further charges of allowing contaminated water from industrial premises onto land.
The two directors were discharged without conviction on all related charges, partly in recognition that overseas travel was an integral part of their business, and a conviction could harm that ability.
‘Horrid smell’
A member of the public complained of the “horrid rotten egg smell” in late 2022, followed by two further complaints from others in the area.
Scientific testing from streams nearby found a mix of contaminants including E. coli concentration of raw sewage or concentrated animal effluent and organic contaminants.
The discharges had a “serious adverse impact” on stream ecology for up to 3km, which was likely to have killed aquatic life, the results of detailed sampling and analysis showed.
Judge Brian Dwyer said the management failures were significant and did not think it unfair to describe the defendants as having a “casualness” or “naivety in their understanding” of the level of management required to operate a composting operation.
Azwood operates a wholesale landscaping business on a 16ha property near Brightwater.
Some of its operations involved residue clean-up for the forestry industry including repurposing natural waste, wood residues, sawdust, manures, fungi, trade byproducts and green waste, and the commercial production of compost.
The defendants gained a retrospective resource consent in May 2022 which allowed up to 15,000cu m of compost material including green waste, animal manure and processed fish manure to be stored on the site in open-air stockpiles.
Judge Dwyer said the activity was started in about 2016, in what he found to be the mistaken but honest belief that composting was allowed by a consent granted in 2011 on advice received from the directors’ engineering advisers at the time.
Wastewater (including leachate generated by the composting operation) was to be contained in clay-lined pits and a clay-lined storage pond.
In November 2022 the Tasman council received a complaint from a member of the public about the smelly black substance flowing in a stream that was near the Azwood site.
Council officers arrived, and detected the odour but not its source.
They returned the next day and saw “brown-coloured odorous water” flowing via the stream that crossed the Azwood site.
The inspectors then visited the site and found the smelly liquid coming from the storage pond via two obvious flow paths into a drain and then into the stream.
Samples of the “strongly odorous” brownish-black water were taken for testing.
Inspectors found a similar situation during a follow-up inspection a few days later, and an abatement notice was issued to Fergus Brewerton.
A further complaint then arrived from another member of the public about the same smell in the Eves Valley Stream which the complainant traced back to the Azwood site.
More water samples were taken for testing, and in May 2023, the council received another complaint from a member of the public about “a bad smell in the vicinity of Eves Valley Stream”, that the colour of the water looked “weird” and that it had been like that for a few weeks.
Council officers found that water from the Azwood storage pond was seeping into an adjacent paddock where run-off water was flowing to a drain and into the stream.
The final incident was detected during a council inspection of the area in late August 2023.
In sentencing, Judge Dwyer said the three abatement notice charges against Fergus Brewerton were significant matters in their own right, but several factors were behind his decision to grant the directors a discharge without conviction.
“This was offending of some gravity, although I have also noted the factors which diminish the defendants’ culpability to some extent and hence reduce the gravity of the offending,”
He said both directors had family obligations in Australia and Fergus Brewerton was an active board member of an international religious organisation that required him to travel overseas.
The company also relied heavily on overseas technology in its operation which required the pair to travel internationally.
Judge Dwyer adopted a starting point of a $175,000 fine for the company, reduced to $144,375 by a 12.5% discount for the guilty pleas, plus 5% for past good conduct.
The fine, less a 10% Crown deduction was to be paid to the council.
He said his finding had to be tempered by the fact that construction of the pond itself was allowed by one of the 2011 consents.
Tracy Neal is a Nelson-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She was previously RNZ’s regional reporter in Nelson-Marlborough and has covered general news, including court and local government for the Nelson Mail.
