A quarry owner in a dispute with the Dunedin City Council over the size of the company's rock extraction operation is seeking resource consent to triple the quarry's production.
Geoff Scurr Contracting has applied for consent to expand its existing Kilmog Quarry in Pryde Rd, near Warrington, to allow extraction of 30,000cu m of rock on average each year, but up to 45,000cu m in some years.
The application has prompted submissions from five neighbours - most opposed to the expansion - who will argue their cases at a council hearings committee meeting on Friday.
However, a report by council planner Darryl Sycamore said it appeared the existing quarry was already operating beyond the limits of a consent granted in 1998, which restricted extraction to 5000cu m over four months each year.
Despite that, the company appeared to have been taking between 15,000cu m and 17,000cu m a year, Mr Sycamore's report said.
The company's new application sought to potentially triple that, by allowing up to 45,000cu m of rock to be taken each year, and an 8m excavation pit to be deepened to more than 100m.
The new extraction would average 30,000cu m a year, but the company wanted the "flexibility" to take as little as 15,000cu m or as much as 45,000cu m, depending on demand, Mr Sycamore's report said.
In return, the company was proposing restricted hours of operation, dust control measures, site rehabilitation plans and a process to notify neighbours when blasting was to occur, as well as a complaints procedure.
However, Mr Sycamore's report instead recommended granting consent for a smaller operation, limiting extraction to 15,000cu m a year and with a list of conditions, including tighter hours of operation.
That would bring the consented limits in line with what had been occurring at the site, instead of allowing a larger expansion that could result in "potentially significant" environmental impacts and disruption for neighbours, his report said.
Geoff Scurr Contracting director and co-owner Tracey Scurr, when contacted this week, denied her company was in dispute with the council, but said the council's claims were "a matter of interpretation".
She said the claim her company had been extracting up to 17,000cu m of rock a year from the site was "incorrect", but existing consent conditions did not restrict the volume of material that could be taken anyway.
She would not say how much the company had been taking, describing the information as "commercially sensitive".
Mr Sycamore's report said exactly what was allowed under the existing 1998 resource consent remained "in dispute".
That was because the original application for consent, and documents sent to neighbours for their approval, included a maximum annual yield of 5000cu m from the quarry.
Conditions attached to the consent, once issued, did not "expressly stipulate" that requirement, but it was "apparent in the text of the decision that this is how the quarry is expected to be operated", Mr Sycamore's report said.
The existing quarry had therefore been operating "at odds with that anticipated in the consent documentation, and accepted at the time by the affected parties".
Despite that, council resource consent manager Alan Worthington confirmed a prosecution for a breach of the Resource Management Act was not considered, although there was "a potential risk there" for the company.
Prosecution was "quite a large step" to take, and the council was instead trying to "tidy up" the situation by giving consideration to a new consent, he said.
