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

"Kentucky may be the nation’s third-leading coal producer, but over the years it has increasingly turned to other states to supply coal for its power plants."

"Federal wildlife managers want Florida’s manatee, the whiskered lumbering icon that came to represent the fight to save the state’s vulnerable wildlife, removed from the endangered species list."

"In early 2014, evidence of radioactive pollution was discovered in the city of Oak Ridge's sewage treatment facility on the west side of town."

"Contractors at Entergy's Waterford 3 nuclear power plant on the west bank of St. Charles Parish failed to conduct required hourly fire inspections and falsified records for 10 months to show the inspections occurred, according to the results of a 15-month-long investigation announced Wednesday (Dec. 23) by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission."

"A leaked draft report compiled by [North Carolina] state environmental officials shows that the coal ash waste in a huge basin at the Duke Energy power plant in Belews Creek, and in basins at almost all other Duke power plant sites statewide, will have to be excavated and put in lined landfills by 2019."

"As temperatures climb, so, too, will sea levels."

"Florida's Everglades has an ecosystem known for its sawgrass, cypress trees, alligators — and perhaps soon, oil wells."

"In Hampton Roads, Va., the epicenter of both the evangelical movement and climate change, land and ideology are losing the battle to a rising Atlantic."

"North Carolina’s recent tactic of blocking citizens from challenging state permits for industrial polluters could result in a federal takeover of the state’s regulatory program."

"With their garish blooms, there's something special about orchids, and in the U.S., no place has more native species than Fakahatchee Strand Preserve. The state park in Southwest Florida was the setting for the 1998 book The Orchid Thief. Scientists there are working to bring back varieties lost through the years to poachers and habitat destruction."