Farmer convicted for blocking race

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32540, 25 February 1971, Page 15

Farmer convicted for blocking race

(From Our Own Reporter)

ASHBURTON, February 24.

Action to abate a private nuisance could not be taken against an authorised public "work, said Mr J. D. Kinder, S.M., in the Ashburton Magistrate’s Court this week in upholding the prosecution of a farmer who interfered with the headworks of a water-race on the Ashburton River.

Decision had been reserved from December 16. The defendant, Sydney Osborne Symons, of Alford Forest (Mr G. C. Spencer), was convicted and fined $l5; he had pleaded not guilty. The charge had been brought by the Ashburton County Council (Mr, H. J. Kennedy) and related to the defendant’s blocking the intake of the race, to divert the river-channel from it, on July 11 last year. At the hearing in December evidence was given that the defendant admitted blocking the race because of alleged erosion and stock losses on his property. He wanted to have the matter taken to Court, because he had failed to have the race stopped by the county council or the South Canterbury Catchment Board. The Magistrate said that “the right to self help under these circumstances certainly could not be encouraged,” even though the difficulty of the defendant in the case could be appreciated. In his written decision, the Magistrate said that the county council, acting under statutory authority, controlled works constructed to lead water from the North

Ashburton River to a water race from McFarlane’s Terrace.

The defendant had interfered with the headworks of the McFarlane’s water-race without the consent of the council.

Assuming that a nuisance had been created, it was inevitably involved in the construction and maintenance of an authorised public work and it would found a claim for compensation under the Public Works Act.

No action against the council, therefore, lay at the suit of the deefndant, who accordingly had no right of abatement.

A person obstructing a local authority operating under the statutory power was liable to a penalty, notwithstanding that the obstruction was in the bona fide assertion of a right to do so as owner of the land, the Magistrate said. After the defendant’s conviction, Mr said that the defendant was a conscientious farmer and did his best to farm difficult country. From the evidence, it had been shown that he had suffered loss of land from erosion.