A submission made to Bay of Plenty Council annual plan submissions is claiming Kawerau mill operators Carter Holt Harvey and Norske Skog Tasman are being illegally overcharged.

In the current financial year the mill owners paid more than $190,000 in fees and regional council rates in relation to the Tasman Mill.

The submission heard in Te Puke on Wednesday claims CHH and NST should be paying only $15,000.

The $190,000 includes about $30,000 in rates to the Regional Council, covering mainly general services, which the mill operators say appears to include activities such as state of the environment monitoring. It also includes $1300 in actual and reasonable fees for some compliance monitoring, presumably based on time-sheets – and more than $160,000 for annual 'Resource Consent Charges'.

The mill owners base the $15,000 comparison on their own assessment of the time council staff would need to spend on and off site, based on the charge out rates for time that is invoiced each year and their experience of the same costs at other similar New Zealand sites. (Carter Holt Harvey owns a paper mill in Tokoroa).

There is no sound basis for the fees which they say 'overcharge many times more” than the cost of administering the consents. The law only allows the council to cover the costs associated with the administration and monitoring of consents plus 'a portion' of council's costs of regional monitoring.

The mill owners say the charges cannot relate to the collective effects of the Mill's activities, and suspects the Tasman Mill charges are being used to the subsidise small consent holders, or to cover other council services.

The Resource Management Act under which the regional council charges the fees states the local authority should only require a person to pay a charge where that monitoring relates to the likely effects on the environment of that person's activities.

The Tasman Mill holds five consents, each incurring a large consent holder charge, even though they relate to the same activity - pulp and paper mill processing.

The mill owners' submission states the council practice results in a gross over-estimation of monitoring and supervision costs based on what appear to be erroneous assumptions.

It seems extreme to suggest that the mere existence of separate consents should dictate the amount of state of the environment monitoring.

The mill owners also complain the fees appear to be based on schedules that list ‘pulp and paper mill' as a special category without justifying the basis of the category.

And they warn that a policy of excessive taxation or unjustified charges leads to economic risks, placing pressure on jobs.