Producer’s water breach draws $50k fines

The state’s third-largest vegetable producer and two of its directors have been fined more than $50,000 for using excess water at properties in Perth’s north east.

Horticultural business T&C Do and Son and its directors received the fines after it was determined to have exceeded its water licence by 12 per cent over 12 months.

The business caught the attention of the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation in September 2021, when routine readings found a meter connected to bores in the Gingin groundwater area was inaccurately recording water use.

Officers from the department noticed a meter was not moving, despite crops being irrigated at the time, and determined it had not recorded any water use since a reading almost a month earlier.

Two company directors, Phung Tran Do and Tuyet Chau Huynh, pleaded guilty to four offences relating to water overuse in the Joondalup Magistrates Court.

The pair were each fined $2,000 as a main penalty, as well as $22,000 each as an additional daily penalty. A $6,000 fine was imposed on the company, as well as court costs of $1,239.90.

Department of Water and Environmental Regulation executive director of regional delivery Simon Taylor said the sentence sent a message to users that the department would take necessary steps to protect the state’s water resources.

“Western Australia’s drying climate means groundwater is precious and increasingly scarce,” he said.

“Strict controls on who may take groundwater and the amounts they may take are essential because of falling groundwater levels, which threaten the sustainability of the state’s habitats and ecosystems.”

The department said T&C Do and Son was estimated to have overused its water licence allowance by around 170,529 kilolitres – the equivalent of 68 Olympic swimming pools.

The company is a supplier of major supermarkets.

The company’s website said up to 283 hectares of its 405-hectare collective landholding were under irrigation at any one time.