Chesapeake Bay Named One of Southeast's Most Endangered Places

The Southern Environmental Law Center has released its fourth annual "Top 10 Endangered Places" in the Southeast and the list includes some familiar landscapes.

The list released Thursday includes the Chesapeake Bay, the coast of Alabama and mountains in Tennessee and Virginia.

The environmental group said those places are threatened by pollution, offshore oil drilling and a powerful way of extracting natural gas.

The center noted that the Chesapeake Bay is particularly threatened by nutrient and sediment flowing into the bay from its 64,000-square-mile watershed, as well as legal challenges to the EPA's restoration plan.

Other entries are South Carolina's Savannah River and Tennessee's Chilhowee Mountain. Those two are threatened by a planned 38-mile shipping channel and a four-lane highway.

The center says the 10 on the endangered list "face immediate, potentially irreparable threats in 2012."