QUITO – An Ecuadorean judge ruled yesterday in an epic environmental case that Chevron was responsible for oil drilling contamination in a swathe of Ecuador’s northern jungle and ordered the oil giant to pay US$8.6 billion ($11.4 billion) in damages and cleanup costs.

The amount was far below the US$27.3 billion recommended by a court-appointed expert but appeared to be the highest damage award ever issued in an environmental lawsuit.

But whether the plaintiffs – including indigenous groups who say their hunting and fishing grounds in Amazon River headwaters were decimated by toxic wastewater that also raised the cancer rate – can collect remains to be seen. (Read on …)

North Otago attracted more environmental enforcement attention than any other part of the Otago region during the second half of last year, as far as breaches of the Resource Management Act were concerned.

Otago Regional Council (ORC) figures show that between July 1 last year and January 1 this year, 11 of the 19 infringement notices issued under the RMA were for North Otago-located activities. These were mostly for the discharge of contaminants to air (five) and to water (four).

During the same period, five North Otago prosecutions came before the courts. Out of a total of nine cases brought from throughout the region (apart from North Otago) there were two incidents in south-west Otago, one on the Taieri Plains, and one in Dunedin. (Read on …)

IT WAS a DIY repair-job gone wrong that has now cost a Sydney man $19,000.

Peter Petrou, 43, was digging outside the house he shares with his parents and children in Randwick on July 31 last year, searching for a leaking pipe that was causing water to gush over his front steps and footpath, when he cut into what he described as a ”fat root” belonging to an old native brush box tree.

Although the cut did not kill the tree, it had to be removed, the council said, for safety reasons. Mr Petrou was ordered to pay $19,000 by Waverley Local Court for breaching a tree preservation order, thought to be the largest penalty of its kind ever issued in the local government area. (Read on …)