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Legislators often contact South Carolina's Department of Health and Environmental Control seeking to expedite -- or influence -- environmental permits.

"A lawsuit filed by about 5,700 Baton Rouge residents against ExxonMobil Corp. over a 1993 fire crawled through federal court for almost 15 years and has finally come to an end -- the residents lost, lawyers said."

The National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, NC, is playing a growing role in understanding weather and climate change.

"Perhaps the last thing the Navy is looking for at the moment is a tangle with environmentalists. But that is exactly what it has -- over a proposed $100 million naval warfare training range off the northern Atlantic coast of Florida."

"Two of Florida's top politicians are pushing state and federal regulators to approve a taxpayer-funded breakwater that would slow down, but not stop, erosion threatening expensive Palm Beach County condos. But biologists fear the breakwater will block sea turtles from one of the most important nesting beaches in the state."

"People in North Texas worry about tornadoes, not earthquakes. That's not the case in the small town of Cleburne, just south of Fort Worth. They've had six quakes so far this month. Cleburne happens to sit on a huge, recently discovered natural gas deposit called Barnett Shale. There's been a lot of drilling, and some people wonder if that has triggered the earthquakes."

Environmentalists say Florida officials are thwarting a 2-year-old law banning the spreading of sewage sludge on the Everglades.

Engineering projects hope to save Louisiana's shrinking coastal wetlands by diverting sediment from the Mississippi River -- but a new study says there is not enough mud in the Mississippi to do the job.