Three Bay of Plenty dairy farmers have been pinged by Bay of Plenty Regional Council for polluting waterways.
Langford Holdings Limited, Waihi Beach, Edward Tye, Katikati, and Kildarragh Farms Limited, Rotorua, are convicted for discharging dairy effluent onto land.
The Tauranga District Court fined them $13,000, $26,500 and $12,000 respectively for the offence.

Bay of Plenty Regional Council has also successfully prosecuted Fonterra for a chemical spill, which ended up in a stormwater drain at its Edgecumbe milk processing factory.
Fonterra was convicted for allowing contaminants, nitric acid and caustic cleaning agent, to discharge to a storm water drain and into a water course and was fined $24,000.
Bay of Plenty Regional Council group manager water management Eddie Grogan says this is a timely reminder to holders of resource consents that they must be compliant all the time.
"All three dairy cases were a result of poor management of effluent systems, including ponds and irrigators," says Eddie.
"Farmers need to ensure maintenance of their equipment is undertaken regularly, and that staff are fully trained in the operation of the equipment.
"As a consequence of the problems experienced last season, we have been working closely with Federated Farmers, Fonterra and DairyNZ to collaboratively develop some great tools to help farmers to achieve and maintain compliance."
"Fonterra and DairyNZ have also taken the initiative to establish support people on the ground to advise farmers about systems design and management, which we encourage people to use."

Eddie says the audit was done in August last year and that most of the farmers would have acted promotely to fix their effluent systems.

The council are involved with these farmers until they comply, says Eddie.

'Most (farmers) would have done it promtly. We make sure the systems are upgraded quickly.”

He is hopeful of there being better results in this years audit of farm systems.

'I am confident we'll see better levels of compliance.”

Eddie says a working group with industry groups like Federated Farmers, Fonterra and DairyNZ are advising farmers.

'It's quite heartening to see the amount of effort put in by the industry.

'We are trying to get farmers to look at the tools so we get 100 percent compliance. Some people need more assistance – there are people within the industry that can help.”

Eddie says the public are getting less tolerent of effluent discharge into waterways.

'People are getting less accespting of non compliance.”