We were at Mannering Park on the southern shore of Lake Macquarie in September, reporting on the two fish kills that caused the death of about 15,000 fish in two incidents over a six-week period.
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The EPA is investigating but, as the Herald reported last week, the results of the probe are yet to be released.
Anyhow, while chasing the story we went to the house of Sue Wynn, a former Wyong Shire councillor and Greens candidate.
She showed us around her rebuilt house. We'd been meaning to write about it for months.
The place looked beautiful. One of the most interesting aspects of the rebuild was the walls. They're made of hemp.
They created a very different feeling to ordinary walls.
The air in the house felt cleaner, more natural and healthier. The interior of the house actually seemed to emit happy vibes. And that's not meant to be a quip about cannabis. The house really did feel good.
"The walls are 400mm thick all around the house. It's breathable, termite-resistant and fire-resistant," Sue told us at the time.
She said the hemp walls "clean the air" of mould, which was particularly noticeable during all the wet weather we'd been having.
She said the walls were part of a "solar-passive home".
"It allows the heat through," she said.
So at night, the home warms up.
"I don't have any airconditioning at all. Don't need it," she said.
"I have 3.3-metre ceilings. In summer we have fans. When we've had over 40 degrees a few times, we're all right. I'm not saying we're cold, but it's pleasant enough with the fan over you in bed."
In winter, she said, "it's warm enough for us, but we'll put a rug or blanket on".
"I have a little heater that I put on for three or four hours. Overnight, it warms the hemp, which releases it back into the house."
They don't feel the cold in the house in the same way they might feel cold in ordinary houses. That is, cold that feels like it's penetrating deep inside the body and chilling the bones.
Sue used hemp because she "wanted it to be Earth-friendly" and have less of a carbon footprint.
"I have a huge concrete slab, so I'm probably just breaking even [in the bid to be carbon neutral]."
She said the hemp walls make the home "beautiful to live in".
"You'll walk in and it has a completely different feel. That's part of the reason - to live in a healthy atmosphere.
"I'm also extracting carbon dioxide from the air, as the hemp is petrifying. It will take 60 years to petrify and remove seven tonnes of carbon dioxide.
"At the end of its life, it can be broken down. There won't be all this rubbish."
She sourced the hemp from Vacy in the Hunter Valley.
The hemp crop had very low THC, the active chemical in cannabis that makes people stoned.
"They grow it for building. It's a three-month turnaround crop," she said.
"It's bigger in WA than it is on the east coast. They seem to have a bigger hemp culture."
Sue could have used rammed earth, straw bales or mudbrick instead of hemp. She's happy with her decision.
"I think in my heart, I would have loved to have been an architect," said Sue, who became a maths teacher.
She wasn't good at drawing, though.
"Now with CAD [computer-aided design], I'd be fine."
