Fine for illegal dumping

A company director, Stephen Graham Knight, has been fined and ordered to pay investigation costs after pleading guilty to the discharge of electroplating chemicals from industrial trade premises. The first charge was for the discharge of those chemicals onto land; the second was for the discharge of chemicals which may have entered water. The sentencing hearing was before Judge Jackson, sitting in the Christchurch District Court on March 18, 2010.

On September 11, 2008, Environment Canterbury was informed that a chemical spill had occurred on a property near Parnassus, North Canterbury. Environment Canterbury officers were told that several 200 litre drums of washed down copper sulphate and hydrogen peroxide which had been left on the property by the previous owner Mr Knight, had been filled with water and then emptied. The officers found an area of dead or dying pine trees and dead surface vegetation. The inspection also found yellow and white substances on the land surface and trees bleeding blue coloured sap. Numerous samples were taken from the affected areas for examination.

The property is above an aquifer and is approximately 30 metres from the Waiau River. The chemical wash water had been emptied out in areas of the property that were not accessed by stock.

Judge Jackson noted that the defendant’s actions were deliberate as he had gone to some effort to dispose of the chemicals at hidden locations on the property which had not been disclosed to the new owner. The Judge also said there was the potential for the contaminants to affect groundwater from the Waiau River catchment and any surface water that it intercepts. He also said that water can reach the lower portions of the affected area during a flood.

The Judge accepted Mr Knight’s early guilty plea and his attendance at a restorative justice conference. The Judge also ordered Mr Knight to remediate the contamination remaining on the site. The estimated cost of the remediation work is $116,000 and is expected to take six months to complete. The Judge declined to make an order for reparation of $278,000 which, the victim had claimed was the estimated loss in land value, even after the remediation works were carried out.

Mr Knight was fined a total of $6000 on both charges and ordered to pay $16,000 towards Environment Canterbury’s investigation costs. Mr Knight was also ordered to pay court costs of $130 and solicitors costs of $113 on each charge.

“People who dump waste onto land risk damage to the environment and contaminating surface and groundwater and the recovery time can be measured in years,” said Environment Canterbury director regulation Kim Drummond.

“This court action also highlights that it is often very expensive to clean up a site where illegal dumping has taken place, and in this case, costs are also incurred by the new landowners, Environment Canterbury, and potentially future generations.”