Alabama

OAK GROVE, Ala.—Clara Riley thought she was having a heart attack.  As an Alabama mine has slowly approached the coal seam under her home, Riley’s anxiety has sometimes gotten the best of her. In late April, after a mine representative visited her home, the 90-year-old said she broke down. She could feel the weight of […]

SHILOH COMMUNITY, Ala.—Their land is bound forever.  The deeds of three homeowners—Pastor Timothy Williams, Aretha Wright and Page Jones—all living in the historically Black Shiloh community of south Alabama, tell the tale.  Restrictive covenants attached to their deeds limit the ability of current and future residents to file actions against the state. The legal instruments […]

COFFEE COUNTY, Ala.—Ronald McKinnon thinks six years is long enough.  Residents of the Shiloh community, the historically Black neighborhood where McKinnon grew up, have faced repeated flooding for six years now—the result of an expanded highway state workers elevated above nearby homes, they have said.  McKinnon grew up in Shiloh, attending nearby Elba High School […]

MOODY, Ala.—When Danielle Cusimano brought her newborn baby, Saylor, home from the hospital in December 2022, it was hard to keep the smoke out. The Cusimano family lived a few miles from the site of the Moody landfill just northeast of Birmingham where a month earlier, in November 2022, a fire had sparked to the […]

MOODY, Ala.—Richard Harp couldn’t believe his ears.  On Thursday, he heard for the first time from Inside Climate News that an EPA official had publicly confirmed what he already knew—the massive underground landfill fire near Moody, Alabama, just a football field away from his home, is still burning. In fact, the official told ICN, it […]

NEW MARKET, Ala.—Merri Gardunia thought her house might be on fire.  Gardunia, a special education teacher, was on her way home in August 2023 when she saw the smoke billowing above her road in New Market, Alabama, a small town just northeast of Huntsville.  As she got closer, she sighed in relief. It wasn’t her […]

PRICHARD, Ala.—Sometimes it’s the water that plagues them. Other times, it’s the fire. Da’Cino Dees has waded through the water in the Alabama Village neighborhood nearly all his life. Now 31, Dees said he often walked to school through the floodwater as a child. Rainwater, he said, has always stood in the streets.  “When it […]