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

"A judge has thrown out the air permit for a massive new plastics complex in St. James Parish, telling regulators to start from the beginning."

"Recent flooding in Jackson, Mississippi, exacerbated the city's already failing water system. Experts say it's a familiar threat in disinvested communities of color."

"Six days after a state Senate panel killed legislation that would have required real-time air monitoring along the edges of major Louisiana industrial facilities, an Olin Chemical subsidiary had a significant chlorine gas leak that sickened 39 people."

"The governor of Mississippi urged residents of Jackson, the state’s capital and largest city, not to drink the water there — if they still had access to it — warning that running water would soon be unavailable as the city’s long-struggling treatment plant failed."

"ISLE DE JEAN CHARLES - When she was a girl, Theresa “Betty” Billiot would open the back door to a view of cattle grazing in pastures, cotton fields and wild prairie dotted with duck ponds. Now she opens the same door and sees nothing but the rising sea."

"A day after warning residents of Jackson, Mississippi, to “get out now,” the mayor of the state’s biggest city is urging them to not take evacuation warnings lightly as record-setting rain threatens to flood streets and creep into homes within the next two days."

"Bird flu has killed hundreds of wild black vultures at a Georgia sanctuary that houses more than 1,500 other animals."

"With almost all of Texas in drought, ranchers are sending ever more cattle off to slaughter, a trend likely to increase beef prices over the long term due to dwindling supply from the largest cattle region in the United States."

"Floods devastated Eastern Kentucky in July. Now, a community wants to hold Blackhawk Mining accountable for its possible role in the disaster."