Fonterra has escaped with only a formal warning for dumping 5 million litres of buttermilk on an Atiamuri farm in October last year.

Instead of imposing fines, the Waikato Regional Council has issued formal warnings for breaches of the Resource Management Act to Fonterra and two other parties.

The 'buttermilk lake” was discovered at Atiamuri, in the South Waikato, last October when Fonterra's manufacturing capacity failed to keep up with the spring's record milk production.

The standard penalties for breaching the Resource Management Act are, for an individual, a $300,000 fine or two years in prison and for a corporate, a $600,000 fine.

'On the face of it this initially appeared to be a relatively serious environmental incident,” says council investigations manager Patrick Lynch. 'However, now that we have looked into all of the relevant factors and surrounding circumstances we are confident that it looked far worse than it was.

'We have established that approximately 5 million litres of buttermilk was discharged onto land at the Atiamuri property over a two week period. Due to the topography where the buttermilk had been discharged, the soil type there, and some earlier earthworks that had been completed on site, we are satisfied there was no immediate loss of any contaminant to ground water or surface water.

'I think that it is fair to say that a high standard of remediation has subsequently occurred on site. All of the contaminant has been removed and lawfully disposed of.

'The discharge was a very large volume and its discharge into the storage pond was unlawful; however, taking into account the lack of adverse environmental effect and the positive response by the parties involved we have decided to issue formal warnings to the land owner, an individual involved in the management of the property, and the dairy supply company involved.

'We are also satisfied that changes to procedures at the dairy supply company concerned make a recurrence of this event extremely unlikely,” says Patrick.