THE NSW Land and Environment Court has ordered a Lane Cove company to pay more than $250,000 in fines following offences that damaged natural areas of Tea Gardens.

The Lane Cove company, Bao Lin Pty Ltd (Bao Lin), was formerly owned by husband-and-wife Phillip Dong Fang Lee and Xiao Bei Shi until Mr Lee ceased direction in 2018, when Ms Shi took the role of director of the company.

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On 12 April, Bao Lin pled guilty to four offences against the Water Management Act 2000 – the unauthorised clearing of vegetation, construction of dams, and associated activities on waterfront land on privately owned property near Tea Gardens.

The offences impacted Station Creek and some of its tributaries joining Bundabah Creek, which is part of the North Arm Cove Sanctuary Zone of the Great Lakes Marine Park and occurred from acquisition of the premises in 2015 until 2020.

Between 2016 and 2019 there were three main regulators who investigated activities undertaken at the premises, being the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) – Water, DPI – Fisheries, and Water NSW.

The prosecutor, the Natural Resources Access Regulator (NRAR), became involved in the investigation in 2018.

Justice Robson determined that the company was in full control of all the causes which gave rise to the offences.

“Bao Lin undertook the controlled activities involving the removal of vegetation along four watercourses, without a controlled activity approval, and constructed a dam in a number of creek beds, which included the removal of vegetation in the beds and on the banks of those watercourses.

“In each circumstance, Bao Lin had control over the causes that gave rise to the offences and by the commission of the offences caused harm to the environment,” Justice Robson said.

Justice Robson also deemed that the offences were in the range of “moderate seriousness”.

For the removal of vegetation and endangered ecological communities, the company was fined $64,600.

For clearing vegetation and depositing material within 40 metres of a water course, it was fined another $57,000.

Justice Robson fined the company a further $64,600 for constructing an unauthorised dam on a watercourse.

The dam has now been removed.

The company was fined an additional $64,600 for building an illegal dam on another stream at the same location.

The landholder was ordered to reform a spillway to replicate a natural channel and slow water flow and implement a vegetation management plan within three months of it being approved by the prosecutor, (NRAR).

Bao Lin was originally charged with thirteen offences and Justice Robson stated that the “subsequent pleas of guilty may have avoided a more lengthy hearing on liability”.

Bao Lin has not apologised to the Court or the community for undertaking the works, and the company has also chosen not to accept responsibility for its actions, specifically in relation to the construction of the second dam.

The court further ordered that the stream bank vegetation corridor around this dam be widened by the landholder.

The company has been ordered to pay legal costs of NRAR in an amount yet to be determined, and to publicise the matter in digital and print publications across the region.

By Tara CAMPBELL