Court order and fine for “extremely reckless” earthworks

A Cambridge landscape supplies company, Devon Park Limited, has been convicted and fined $85,000 for carrying out illegal earthworks, damaging and contaminating a stream and breaching an abatement notice.

All of the breaches of the Resource Management Act related to the company’s activities on its own rural property situated at Te Miro, near Cambridge.

The sentence was imposed by Judge Melanie Harland in the Hamilton District Court where she also imposed an Enforcement Order prohibiting any further unlawful activity and requiring an engineer to be engaged to provide a remediation plan for the property. The order was agreed to by Devon Park Ltd.

In passing sentence, Judge Harland commented that “the impact on the property was profound” and that “the defendant’s excavation and earthworks resulted in the land becoming unstable, and made it highly susceptible to erosion”. Judge Harland regarded the behaviour as “extremely reckless”.