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Stan Semenoff, who was Whangārei mayor and an elected Northland Regional Councillor, now faces uo to two years in prison or a $300,000 fine. (File photo)
Whangārei’s former mayor Stan Semenoff has been convicted after allowing a polluting fire of tyres, PVC and plastics to be lit.
Stanley Gillis Alexander Semenoff faced two charges of polluting the air, in breach of the Resource Management Act, for the black smoke fire in June 2020.
The charges were laid by the Northland Regional Council – the same council on which he served, representing ratepayers in Whangārei.
In the Whangārei District Court on Monday, Judge Prudence Steven QC convicted him of the two charges: Discharging contaminates into the air by burning tyres, plastic and treated logs and allowing the fire to continue burning the following day.
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The judge’s reserved decision came after a one-day hearing in May, where the former mayor’s lawyer Matthew Atkinson said Semenoff did not light the fire, nor know that it would be lit.
The choking fire was on a 3ha industrial premise in South End Ave in Whangārei’s Raumanga, the base of Stan Semenoff Group – a company with about 100 employees across logging, bulk transport and sand mining businesses.
Denise Piper/Stuff
The June 2020 fire occurred on Stan Semenoff Group land in Whangārei’s Raumanga, but the former mayor has been found to be personally responsible for the pollution. (File photo)
The charges were against Semenoff personally as managing director, as he was accused of undertaking the acts himself or knowingly permitted them to occur.
But Atkinson said the fire was the the responsibility of Semenoff’s employees as he had suffered a stroke about two months before the fire, which meant he had to take a step back from his business’ operations.
Semenoff was Whangārei mayor from 1989 to 1998 and again from 2007 to 2010.
In between this, he was an elected Northland regional councillor and Northland District Health Board member.
He now faces up to two years in jail or a $300,000 fine, with a sentencing date yet to be set.
This is not the first time the Northland Regional Council has brought a prosecution against one of its elected leaders.
In September 2020, former chairman Bill Shepherd avoided a fine for illegally spilling cow effluent near a waterway on his dairy farm.
But his sharemilker manager Robert Philip and their respective farm companies had to pay tens of thousands of dollars in fines for what the judge called systematic problems on the farm.
