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

"JASPER — A sign on the way into this Newton County town states its population is 547. On Thursday evening, more than twice that number, upwards of 1,185 people, squeezed into the cafeteria at the local high school."

"The government of the U.S. Virgin Islands on Friday warned that people on the island of St. Croix should not drink their tap water because officials found high levels of lead and copper."

"Some people keep dogs in their backyards. In the Florida Keys, some residents have deer the size of a golden retriever in their yards. As sea levels rise and salt water climbs higher on the islands, it's shrinking habitat for this deer — which already has an estimated population of at most 1,000."

"Acrid smoke from stubborn swamp fires burning south and east of New Orleans combined Monday with dense fog to create the “superfog” that contributed to one of the deadliest highway pileups in memory."

"A new federal proposal calls for creating a conservation area that would span 12 counties in Florida, from the Everglades’ headwaters in the center of the state to sawgrass prairies further south, preserving a region that is home to imperiled species like the Florida panther, the official state animal."

"New Orleans has avoided losing drinking water due to a saltwater ‘wedge’ traveling up the Mississippi River – but in Plaquemines parish, it has already happened".

"Every year, farmers in South Florida set fire to more than 400,000 acres of sugarcane fields pre-harvest, creating a “black snow” of ash and soot that falls on the low-income communities nearby."

"Every year, tourists from across the globe flock to the south-west corner of Puerto Rico to witness a phenomenon found in only a few select locations worldwide."

"Black residents of a tiny island enclave founded by their enslaved ancestors off the Georgia coast have filed suit seeking to halt a new zoning law that they say will raise taxes and force them to sell their homes in one of the South’s last surviving Gullah-Geechee communities."