The News - Lakes District & Central Otago

Central Otago could become one of the country's first "solar centres" through a Central Otago District Council (CODC) scheme that could see ratepayers able to pay off solar hot-water systems through their CODC rates.

"Make a difference over a cuppa'' is the slogan behind a service focusing on the needs of elderly people set to be launched in Queenstown and Wanaka next week.

Winter air quality has been ‘‘significantly better'' in Central Otago than last year, but it is still too soon to say why, according to the Otago Regional Council (ORC).

A rural fire exercise held at the Otago Conservancy Rural Fire Centre in Clyde was a ‘‘modified scaling'' of the two major wildfires north and south of Alexandra in February, 1999.

Starting a film society in Cromwell is just the first small step towards realising a dream for film industry specialist PKay Maracin.

Alexandra Primary School has unveiled new plans for a school-wide rebuild, with its board of trustees now proposing a two-storied complex.

Members of the Wanaka Camera Club consider themselves ‘‘amateurs'' in a ‘‘fledgling'' group, but their interest in photography and the skills learned and developed during the past two years are to be shown for the first time at the club's inaugural exhibition next week.

Staff at Dunstan Hospital face cutbacks to their working hours as part of a plan to save up to $100,000 in the 2009-10 financial year.

Central Otago Mayor Malcolm Macpherson hopes by next winter to have established an electricity relief fund to assist power consumers in the district who cannot afford hefty winter power bills.

Fulton Hogan staff (from left) Adam Chapman, of Queenstown, Vincent Lynch, of Queenstown, and diver Chris Fisher, of Alexandra, try to work out what to do when a digger being operated to remove debris and tree branches from the shoreline of Lake Dunstan got out of its depth on Tuesday.