Environment

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

Dunedin City Council staff will conduct a fact-finding mission at Te Rauone Beach, on Otago Peninsula, after claims urgent action is needed to address erosion in the area.

Otago regional councillors deny suggestions their proposed enforcement process for those who continue to burn coal is too lax.

The Otago Regional Council is warning thousands of farmers with consent to take irrigation water from rivers to conserve as much water as possible to reduce the pressure on rapidly dwindling rivers.

Large colourful crops of oil-seed rape may become a more common sight on Otago farms in the future as the biofuel revolution gathers momentum.

A building platform resource consent has been approved for a Dublin Bay property owned by Aucklander Ted Hewetson, the husband of celebrity chef Annabel Langbein, but an appeal is already being considered by the Upper Clutha Environmental Society.

Stating the obvious is sometimes remarkable.

Cellphone cameras could soon be used to gather evidence of environmentally damaging deeds in back-country Otago.

Although the popular eDay computer waste programmes will not go ahead this year, permanent electronic waste depots have been set up around the country, including three in Otago, and they will also take televisions - for a fee.

How wood burners are used is a major contributor to winter air pollution in urban areas, new research is finding.