Trump's Pollution Rules Rollback to Hit Coal Country Hard

President Donald Trump picked West Virginia as the place to announce he’d roll back pollution rules for coal-fired power plants. But he didn’t mention that coal country would be hit the hardest by the health impacts.

Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency predicts up to 1,500 people a year nationally would die because of extra pollution from Trump’s plan, compared with the number of deaths under the Obama administration’s plan.

The EPA expects at least a couple dozen of those deaths to happen each year in northern West Virginia, the country’s hardest hit area.

Coal miner Steve Knotts says the air in West Virginia seems fine to him. But another West Virginia man, James Perkins, says if the coal-fired power plants are hurting local people, someone needs to make it safe.