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

"A draft update of the state’s $50 billion coastal master plan predicts that 61 new projects to build or protect land, a dozen new levees, and new efforts to elevate, flood-proof or relocate flood-prone homes will reduce annual hurricane storm surge damages by at least $11 billion per year by 2073."

"Television news producer Kristen Hentschel was doing precisely what journalists should do on a searing hot day in Stuart, Fla., in July 2018: She confronted a politician with unwelcome questions."

"A bevy of amateur birders and professional ornithologists is racing to prove the ivory-billed woodpecker still exists, before federal officials remove it from the endangered species list".

"Louisiana's proposed $2.5 billion Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, designed to reconnect the Mississippi River with the Barataria Basin to create as much as 21 square miles of wetlands by 2070, was awarded key permits by the Army Corps of Engineers on Monday that could allow construction to begin in March 2023."

"Hundreds of thousands of Florida property owners face requirements to buy flood insurance under a precedent-setting bill approved Wednesday by the state Legislature. It’s the first mandate of its kind in the country."

"Florida’s property insurance market is in free fall. Florida homeowners pay property insurance rates that are three times the national average. Six companies have become insolvent and left the state in the last year."

"Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s implicit threat of legal action against a proposed titanium dioxide mine on the flanks of Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp raises unresolved questions about the scope of the agency’s authority to protect public lands outside their boundaries, legal experts say."

"Virtually every river, creek and lake tested recently by South Carolina regulators was found to contain “forever chemicals,’’ materials once used by industry that today are being linked to a variety of toxic effects on people."