Former Whangārei mayor Stan Semenoff has been fined more than $15,000 for two charges of allowing a polluting fire of tyres, treated logs and plastics to be lit.

Stanley Gillis Alexander Semenoff was convicted of two charges of polluting the air in breach of the Resource Management Act, for the black-smoke fire at his company in June 2020.

The charges were laid by the Northland Regional Council – the same council on which he served, representing ratepayers in Whangārei.

In a remote hearing of the Whangārei District Court on Thursday, Judge Prudence Steven QC refused an application by his lawyer, Matthew Atkinson, to discharge Semenoff without a conviction.

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While she acknowledged Semenoff had generously supported the community with both time and resources, she said the stigma of a conviction on his mana was not out of all proportion to the offending.

The choking fire was at a 3ha industrial premises in South End Ave in Whangārei’s Raumanga, the base of Stan Semenoff Group – a company with about 120 employees across logging, bulk transport and sand mining businesses.

The charges were against Semenoff personally as managing director, as he was accused of knowingly permitting the fires to occur.

Atkinson tried to argue Semenoff did not light the fire nor know that it would be lit, as he had suffered a stroke about two months before the fire and had to take a step back from his business’s operations.

Judge Stevens, however, found Semenoff failed to educate his employees of the burning rules or set policies and procedures to ensure the rules were not broken.

This was risky given the size of the company and the fact there were unlawful burnings by the company in the past, she said on Thursday.

“Mr Semenoff’s error was that he placed too much emphasis on him being on site to oversee day-to-day activities, a hugely risky if not careless approach.”

The two charges were of discharging contaminates into the air by burning tyres, plastic and treated logs, and allowing the fire to continue burning the following day in beach of national environmental standards.

Semenoff was fined $15,520, to be paid to the regional council, and court costs of $120.

Semenoff was Whangārei mayor from 1989 to 1998 and again from 2007 to 2010.

In between those times, he was an elected Northland regional councillor and a Northland District Health Board member.

This is not the first time the Northland Regional Council has brought a prosecution against one of its elected members.

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.