Queenstown contractor Steve Rout Ltd (SRL) has been ordered to urgently apply for a retrospective consent or face enforcement action after work at a site near Fraser Dam Rd was halted on Tuesday.
The council's planning team leader Ann Rogers visited the site yesterday with the company's project manager, Stacey Rout, and confirmed later Mr Rout had been ordered to cease operations and apply for the consent straight away because he had breached the rules.
"He has no choice, or I will take enforcement action," Ms Rogers said.
The company had removed a large knoll off the top of a hill, done considerable work on a building platform, and formed a road to the bottom of the property. The road stops at the fence next to the entrance to the Kopuwai Conservation Area on Omeo Gully Rd.
Mr Rout told the Otago Daily Times the company had removed about 3000cu m of rock.
"We had been acting under some misguided information, and there was a communication breakdown between planners, the family [the land owners] and the company," he said.
The company had not applied for, or prepared, a resource consent application and would decide by tomorrow if it would do that or just close down the quarry.
"We have got offside with the neighbours now, and that will make it [getting a resource consent] more difficult," he said.
Just two truck loads of schist, which was a sought-after product, especially in Queenstown and Auckland as well as overseas, had been removed. The remainder of the work carried out on the property had been to prepare a building platform at the top of the hill, and to build the road.
But a neighbour, Hugh McStay, claimed the company had been working on the site since September last year.
There was strong reaction to the quarrying from local lobby groups yesterday.
Central Otago Landscape and Environmental Society spokesman Richard Kohler said the society wanted the council to prosecute what he called an example of "ecological vandalism."
Promote Dunstan president Selar Henderson said the non-consented quarrying had "irrevocably damaged this part of our Central Otago landscape."
But Mrs Rogers said the council would not prosecute provided the operator applied for a retrospective resource consent, which would have to be publicly notified.
All disturbance of land, whether within the district plan or not, required the operator to replace the sub-soil, top-soil and vegetation after the work was completed.
The Otago Daily Times was yesterday unable to contact any of the four family members who own the land. Three are overseas.
