Iwi: Crafar cows desecrated tapu site

Allan Crafar. Photo / Herald on Sunday

The Crafar family rural dynasty is under fire again, this time from a Taranaki iwi which says cows have been allowed to trample and desecrate a waahi tapu and pa site.

Ngati Ruanui iwi said the pre-colonial Te Ruaki Pa site at Ohangai, on the Crafar-owned Hillside Farm dairy unit, 5km out of Hawera, had been damaged by overstocking of dairy cows through the recent wet spell.

The owners before Crafar Farms had fenced around the pa site but stock had been allowed on since they took over, Debbie Packer, manager of Ngati Ruanui Group Management, told the Taranaki Daily News.

The farm is one of 16 farms previously owned by the Crafar family, which went into receivership last October with debts of more than $200 million.

Companies belonging to the Crafar family have been fined a number of times for illegal waste water discharges, while another Crafar company, Te Pohue Ltd, was fined $10,550 in 2006 after pleading guilty to 49 charges of animal neglect when emaciated and dead cows were found on a Crafar farm near Napier.

Ngati Ruanui has served notice to Crafar receivers KordaMentha, and has complained to the South Taranaki District Council and the Taranaki Regional Council, hoping for an enforcement order to protect the site from further damage.

The receivers were not available for comment to NZPA today.

- NZPA