SE (AL AR FL GA KY LA MS NC PR SC TN)

"The Gulf of Mexico is now open for commercial fish farming.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced last month that, for the first time in the U.S., companies can apply to set up fish farms in federal waters.

The idea is to compete with hard-to-regulate foreign imports. But opening the Gulf to aquaculture won't be cheap, and it could pose environmental problems."

"It's not simply Flint that has bad water. The Michigan city, which has grabbed headlines recently for its rampant water contamination, is joined in that dubious distinction by another town, much farther south: St. Joseph, La."

"The group's anger was a slow burn. But after decades of being ignored by federal authorities, its members decided to take a very public stand against what they saw as an unjust land grab by the U.S. government."

"Two years after one of the nation's worst coal ash spills, 1 ½ million tons of the potentially toxic waste byproduct from coal-fired power generation is being moved by rail from the banks of the Dan River in North Carolina to a landfill in central Virginia."

"The looming possibility of offshore drilling just 50 miles from South Carolina’s coastline could find more than one presidential candidate looking out of their depth as the state’s February primaries approach."

"Tallassee, Ala., wants the agency to defend them from a landfill company, but residents say proposed rule changes would not be effective enough".

"One of the rarest whales in the world has been spotted off the coast of South Carolina for the first time in three years."

"On the Sea Islands along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia, a painful chapter of American history is playing out again. These islands are home to the Gullah or Geechee people, the descendants of enslaved Africans who were brought to work at the plantations that once ran down the southern Atlantic coast."

State and local authorities placed a landfill in the historically black community of Rogers-Eubank outside Chapel Hill, NC, back in 1972, promising to bring municipal services in return. Four decades later, those promises have yet to be fulfilled.