Waikato farmer fined following tighter RMA law

In Waikato, farmer Wayne Morris Clark was convicted and fined $97,500 for the unauthorised discharge of dairy effluent into the environment on his farm in Te Kowhai, near Hamilton. The court decision was delivered by Judge Melinda Dickey and issued by the Huntley District Court on October 15, 2026, following a prosecution brought by the Waikato Regional Council.

In September 2025, council officers inspected the defendant's 170-cow dairy farm and recorded heavy pooling of effluent being irrigated onto saturated soils. The inspection revealed a lack of adequate storage and a failure to monitor irrigation, alongside insufficient infrastructure to manage the effluent.

Waikato Regional Council representative Evan Billington noted that such discharges could have been prevented, yet insufficient funds had been invested in the infrastructure throughout the owner's decades of ownership and management. According to him, three days prior to the inspection, no one had monitored effluent irrigation during wet weather.

This case became the first in the region to apply the new penalty regime introduced under the Resource Management Act (RMA) in August of the previous year. The updated regulations provide for fines of up to one million dollars or imprisonment for up to 18 months, and the imposed fine partially reflects this toughening of penalties.

The 70-hectare farm relied on limited storage, which forced irrigation to be carried out regardless of the weather. The inspection showed that the travelling irrigator had remained in one paddock for three days, the manager was away for the weekend, and the owner had failed to monitor operations. A drain was located at the end of the paddock, creating risks of effluent entering the groundwater if the irrigation continued.

In sentencing, Judge Dickey characterised Clark's conduct as highly careless and pointed out that the prosecution could have been avoided by complying with environmental requirements.