Forestry company and directors told to tackle large piles of slash posing ‘significant risk’

Friday, 22 November 2024

A forestry company and its directors have been issued an abatement notice requiring it to move large piles of slash on hills above Tolaga Bay.

Gisborne District Council says the slash poses “significant risk of damaging streams, properties, infrastructure and beaches”.

The company had a history of non-compliance and its directors were given until May next year to fix the situation.

A forestry company and its directors are facing enforcement action for leaving large piles of slash on hills in Tairāwhiti, which run the risk of damaging properties, roads and bridges near Tolaga Bay.

Samnic Forest Management and its directors Richard Hayes, Scott Funnell and Gavin Fortune were issued abatement notices this month by Gisborne District Council for failure to remove large amounts of slash and debris from the 940 hectare Samnic Forest, on steep erosion-prone hills inland of Tolaga Bay.

The small community, about a 50-minute drive north of Gisborne, has suffered major damage caused by slash washed from hills in 2018, 2020, and Cyclone Hale in January 2023, and Cyclone Gabrielle the following month.

Numerous forestry companies have been convicted and fined for their lack of action around slash control and remediation.

Samnic Forest Management was fined $91,000 earlier this year for similar offending in its forest.

The latest alleged offending was discovered by council officers during an inspection last month.

Officers found large piles of debris stockpiled on the banks of streams at risk of being washed away. Some of the piles had collapsed into the streams, which feed into the Uawa River, which enters the sea at the township of Tolaga Bay.

The officers noted the company’s history of poor compliance with resource consent conditions dating back to 2017, and said the “ongoing mobilisation of woody debris at Samnic Forest has caused extensive damage to the beds of streams in the forest and poses significant risk of further damage to the streams within the forest and to downstream properties, watercourses, infrastructure and beaches”.

The company had been issued previous abatement notices in 2017, 2018 and 2022.

The new abatement notice was issued this month and the company and directors were told to comply with its resource consent conditions by May next year.

The landowner, Woodlett Investments Ltd., was also issued an abatement notice.

Richard Hayes, who is chairman of the company, said “we are reviewing the notices and taking legal advice”.

The company was part of a joint venture with 20 shareholder companies, set up in 1993 with the investors told they would get returns of $1.3m. The returns did not materialise, with some 100 investors instead losing $50,000 of the $80,000 they invested.

Disputes over misleading promises and attempts by some shareholders to sell the forest have been going on for years.

Concerns about the company’s management in 2018 led to the company’s custodial trustee Prince & Partners Trustee Company Ltd commissioning an independent report that revealed a raft of concerns.

At that stage half the forest had been harvested. The report found that Samnic directors, which had been appointed as harvest managers, had “made a number of decisions and adopted a style of management that have contributed to the forest being harvested in a sub-optimal manner” and which had come at significant cost.

The report listed numerous concerns about conditions within the forest and noted “the amount of slash left behind following harvest is a significant issue, not only from an economic perspective, but also from an environmental and H&S perspective”.

The report recommended that the rest of the harvest be placed under new management - by someone who was a “suitably-qualified and professional forestry management consultant”.

These recommendations were rejected after a shareholder vote held at a special general meeting.