While the company that was known as BRL Hardy (now a subsidiary of Constellation Wines known as The Hardy Wine Company) has admitted guilt on four incidents of discharging effluent water onto land near its Renmano winery at Renmark (South Australia) in 2000 and 2001, the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) has withdrawn five ‘more serious’ charges. According to Nick Smith, the EPA’s chief investigator, three of these charges ‘relate to having caused material and environmental harm by polluting the environment intentionally or recklessly’. The charges were heard before the South Australian Environment, Resources, and Development Court on April 23, but it has not yet been made clear why the EPA dropped the additional, and apparently more severe charges. At this stage BRL Hardy faces fines of the order of A$480,000. The EPA’s Max Harvey says that although the EPA was unable to prove the winery acted recklessly, the guilty plea for the other charges was still a ‘victory’.
