Farm moguls Allan and Frank Crafar are in trouble again for dirty dairying.

The brothers who are selling their business have admitted allowing effluent to be discharged on a farm near Bulls in August last year.

It is the family’s sixth conviction in the past eight years for similar offences, with fines totalling almost $180,000 including a fine totalling $90,000 earlier this year.

Ferry View Farms Ltd, the company that owns the Bulls property and of which the brothers and Allan’s wife, Elizabeth, are directors, pleaded guilty on August 4 to one charge of discharging effluent on land between August 7 and August 13 last year without consent under the Resource Management Act.

“They had dairy-shed effluent all over the land surface which was running off into a creek,” Horizons Regional Council senior investigator Greg Bevin said.

“It is a [farm] management issue and whether it is deliberate or accidental will be for the judge to decide.”

The creek the effluent entered is a tributary of the Rangitikei River.

The farm’s sharemilker, Hermann Kibler, pleaded guilty on July 23 this year to the same offence, and both parties will be sentenced in Palmerston North District Court on October 21.

Allan Crafar told The Dominion Post he had done nothing wrong and only pleaded guilty to avoid hefty legal bills. He had gone out of his way to fix the problem when he bought the property in May 2008, hiring a sucker truck for $5000 to clear the effluent. “Several hundred thousand dollars” had also been spent on the effluent system in the last year.

Mr Crafar said he had been speaking with several potential buyers for the 22-farm business and hoped a sale would be made soon. The family was being driven out by people who had never “got their hands dirty or had a crack at farming”, he said.

The Crafar family faces more legal battles. Horizons is investigating effluent discharge on a farm near Linton owned by Windburn View Limited, a company directed by Allan Crafar’s sons, Robert and Glen, while Hillside Limited a company directed by Allan, Frank and Elizabeth is waiting for a hearing on five fresh charges of discharging effluent.

Greens’ co-leader Russel Norman said people like the Crafars were the reason the Resource Management Act was necessary, and the punishment should increase with each offence.

“They’re multimillion-dollar outfits and the fines have to get much larger so it becomes a significant factor in their financial calculations.”

PREVIOUS PROSECUTIONS

2001: Crafar-directed company Valley View prosecuted by Environment Waikato after effluent overflowed from a holding pond on a farm near Taupo. Fined $13,000.
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2007: Allan Crafar fined $5000 after effluent from the Hawke’s Bay farm he managed was discharged into the Esk River. The company that owned the farm, Te Puhoe, was directed by his son Robert. Fined $13,000.

2007: Plateau Farms , directed by Allan Crafar, his wife Elizabeth and brother Frank, was fined $35,000 after large pools of effluent were found on a Reporoa farm.

2008: Taharua, directed by Allan, Elizabeth and Frank Crafar, fined $37,500 after more than twice as much effluent than permitted was discharged from a Taupo farm.

2009: Allan and Frank Crafar, along with Hillside, a company they directed, were fined a record $88,500 after the effluent system on a company-owed farm near Hamilton failed. Elizabeth Crafar, also a director, was fined $1500.

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