Marjorie Cook

Fish were practically jumping on the lines at the Lake Hawea Family Fishing Classic on Saturday.

Hawea Flat property owner Maire Matheson has endured 31 summers of irrigation flooding on her property without adequate resolution and now says, "Enough is enough".

Otago Daily Times reporter Marjorie Cook travels South Westland with a team cleaning plastic debris from remote beaches.

It seems inconceivable South Westland's rugged, remote, boulder-piled beaches should be polluted by plastic. But at the foot of most driftwood mountains, there's a drink bottle, a sea-battered fishing float, or a tangle of ropes and nets. Marjorie Cook reports.

A 56-year-old nelson man who badly fractured a leg and injured his head when he fell about 5m in the Gorge River valley during a tramping trip in South Westland is recovering in Dunedin Hospital after a challenging helicopter rescue on Thursday afternoon.

Favourable progress has been made with attempts to reduce the amount of algae in Wanaka's domestic water supply, following the trial of a filtration plant at the western intake, project manager Ken Gousmett reported this week.

Smart Environmental's recycling services begin in Wanaka on March 5, with new crates to be delivered to eligible properties from Monday, February 20.

The search for solutions to an accumulation of sludge is looking promising, solid wastes manager Stefan Borowy told the Queenstown Lakes District Council infrastructure services committee this week.

A six-house development proposal for Damper Bay, criticised by the Wanaka Residents Association last year for its "industrial scale", has been refused by two Queenstown Lakes District Council commissioners.

Detailed designs will be drawn up for road rehabilitation works in Panorama Tce, Queenstown, following the Queenstown Lakes District Council infrastructure committee's approval of concept plans on Tuesday.