A dairy farm found in a “shambolic” state with overflowing effluent and staff unaware of who was in charge has been convicted and fined for the fourth time in 11 years.

The sorry state of affairs was discovered by a Bay of Plenty Regional Council enforcement officer during a compliance visit to Brooklyn Farm about 5.5km southeast of Ōpōtiki, on the morning of November 2, 2021.

There were four workers present at the farm but none of them had responsibility for day-to-day management and none of them were able to say who the farm manager was or who was responsible for the effluent disposal system, say court documents.

The council officer found two unlined effluent storage ponds full, with one of them overflowing into a drain that led to another drain before entering the Otara River, which flows past Ōpōtiki.

The river is used for swimming and kayaking downstream of the farm, and is a whitebait spawning site and a locally significant trout habitat.

The 280 hectare farm, with a dairy herd of 750 cows, was owned by Riverlock Land and Property Ltd, and was leased and operated by Brooklyn Dairy Farm 2 Ltd (Brooklyn). The companies are related, with the same directors and shareholders. It’s one of three dairy farms in the Ōpōtiki area owned by Riverlock.

One of the company directors, Geoffrey Brown, arrived at the farm and spoke with the council officer. Brown showed the officer a third, relatively empty effluent storage pond, so the officer instructed him to pump effluent from the other ponds into it.

When the officer asked Brown why this hadn’t been done already, he said it was because the farm manager hadn’t shown staff how to do it.

Samples taken downstream over the overflow showed elevated levels of faecal coliforms and E. coli.

When the council began investigating the incident the directors and staff declined to be interviewed, so all information came from the companies solicitors.

It transpired that the company had held concerns about the farm manager’s management and record keeping, and he had not been on the farm since October, at which stage Brown had taken over as manager.

The farm had no effluent management policy or effluent operating procedure.

The companies pleaded guilty to charges of discharging dairy effluent, onto or into land in circumstances where it may enter water, and appeared before Judge David Kirkpatrick in the Tauranga District Court in November 2022.

The companies appeared before Judge David Kirkpatrick in the Tauranga District Court in November 2022. File photo/SunLive.

Brown was also charged, but the charge was later withdrawn.

In his decision released this week Judge Kirkpatrick noted that Riverlock had three previous convictions for similar offending, in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Brooklyn had no previous convictions. Brown was also convicted for the 2012 and 2013 offending.

As well as the convictions, there had been an extensive history of compliance issues between 2005 and 2020 in relation to Brooklyn Farm, including abatement notices, infringement notices and directions following inspections.

Judge Kirkpatrick also noted the council’s assertion that the farm had been found in “a shambolic state of affairs where no-one at the farm appeared to know, or had been trained in, how to operate the effluent system” and this indicated dysfunction at a high level.

No other dairy farm in the region had been prosecuted so many times by the council.

The companies said the offending had been careless, not reckless, but Judge Kirkpatrick disagreed.

He said the companies would have known they were operating without a farm manager on site and that the remaining staff lacked adequate training and expertise and should have been aware of the risks of this in terms of effluent management.

“I also note that there was no effluent management plan or operating procedure, despite Riverlock having identified in May 2019 that an effluent management plan needed to be developed for the farm,” Judge Kirkpatrick said.

He fined each company $28,125.00, and ordered that the council receive 90 per cent of the total fine of $56,250.

The council’s compliance manager Matthew Harrex said the sentence “highlights the need for robust management systems and farm staff to know how to operate their effluent systems appropriately to ensure that their work is taking the upmost care of te taiao”.

“We are fully aware of the tough times our rural community are facing and this is a timely reminder that failure to take care of the environment can have costly consequences,” he said.

Riverlock Farms Ltd: previous offending

2013 – Riverlock Farms and Geoffrey Brown fined $37,000 for discharging effluent to a drain that entered the Waioeka River and for breaching an abatement notice.

2012 – Riverlock Farms, Geoffrey Brown and his brother Ian Brown fined $74,000 for discharging contaminated underpass liquid to waterways.

2011 – Riverlock fined $40,000 for effluent overflowing from a pond where it could enter water.

-Marty Sharpe/Stuff.