Doris Keller, right, and her daughter, Annabeth Keller, talk outside their camping supply store Thursday, Aug. 23, 2018, in Cross Lanes, W.Va. Doris Keller said she likes President Donald Trump’s plan to roll back pollution controls on coal-fired power plants, even though she lives near one. President Donald Trump picked West Virginia where he announced rolling back pollution rules for coal-fired power plants. But he didn’t mention that the northern two-thirds of West Virginia, with the neighboring part of Pennsylvania, would be hit hardest. (AP Photo/John Raby) John Raby

American Electric Power’s John Amos coal-fired plant in Winfield, W.Va, is seen Aug. 23, 2018, from an apartment complex in the town of Poca across the Kanawha River. President Donald Trump picked West Virginia where he announced rolling back pollution rules for coal-fired power plants. But he didn’t mention that the northern two-thirds of West Virginia, with the neighboring part of Pennsylvania, would be hit hardest.(AP Photo/John Raby) John Raby

In this Aug. 23, 2018 photo, Andrea Maxey of Poca, W.Va., speaks outside her home with the American Electric Power’s John Amos coal-fired power plant is in the background across the Kanawha River in Winfield. Maxey says emissions from the plant aren’t a nuisance. President Donald Trump picked West Virginia where he announced rolling back pollution rules for coal-fired power plants. But he didn’t mention that the northern two-thirds of West Virginia, with the neighboring part of Pennsylvania, would be hit hardest. (AP Photo/John Raby) John Raby

In this Aug. 23, 2018 photo, American Electric Power’s John Amos coal-fired plant in Winfield, W.Va., is seen from the town of Poca across the Kanawha River. President Donald Trump picked West Virginia where he announced rolling back pollution rules for coal-fired power plants. But he didn’t mention that the northern two-thirds of West Virginia, with the neighboring part of Pennsylvania, would be hit hardest. (AP Photo/John Raby) John Raby

Brian Weekly, a contractor at West Virginia’s Grant Town coal-fired power plant, gestures toward the small facility’s smokestack, Thursday, Aug. 23, 2018 in Grant Town, W.Va. Weekly says opponents of the coal industry are behind warnings of health risks from smokestack emissions under the Trump administration’s plan. President Donald Trump picked West Virginia where he announced rolling back pollution rules for coal-fired power plants. But he didn’t mention that the northern two-thirds of West Virginia, with the neighboring part of Pennsylvania, would be hit hardest. (AP Photo/ Ellen Knickmeyer) Ellen Knickmeyer

It’s coal people like Steve Knotts, 62, who make West Virginia Trump Country.

So it was no surprise that President Donald Trump picked the state to announce his plan rolling back Obama-era pollution controls on coal-fired power plants.

Trump left one thing out of his remarks, though: northern West Virginia coal country will be ground zero for increased deaths and illnesses from the rollback on regulation of harmful emission from the nation’s coal power plants.

An analysis done by his own Environmental Protection Agency concludes that the plan would lead to a greater number of people here dying prematurely, and suffering health problems that they otherwise would not have, than elsewhere in the country, when compared to health impacts of the Obama plan.

Knotts, a coal miner for 35 years, isn’t fazed when he hears that warning, a couple of days after Trump’s West Virginia rally. He says the last thing people in coal country want is the government slapping down more controls on coal – and the air here in the remote West Virginia mountains seems fine to him.

“People here have had it with other people telling us what we need. We know what we need. We need a job,” Knotts said at lunch hour at a Circle K in a tiny town between two coal mines, and 9 miles down the road from a coal power plant, the Grant Town plant.

The sky around Grant Town is bright blue. The mountains are a dazzling green. Paw Paw Creek gurgles past the town.

Clean-air controls since the 1980s largely turned off the columns of black soot that used to rise from coal smokestacks. The regulations slashed the national death rates from coal-fired power plants substantially.

These days pollutants rise from smoke stacks as gases, before solidifying into fine particles – still invisible – small enough to pass through lungs and into bloodstreams.

An EPA analysis says those pollutants would increase under Trump’s plan, when compared to what would happen under the Obama plan. And that, it says, would lead to thousands more heart attacks, asthma problems and other illnesses that would not have occurred.

Nationally, the EPA says, 350 to 1,500 more people would die each year under Trump’s plan. But it’s northern two-thirds of West Virginia and the neighboring part of Pennsylvania that would be hit hardest, by far, according to Trump’s EPA.

Trump’s rollback would kill an extra 1.4 to 2.4 people a year for every 100,000 people in those hardest-hit areas, compared to under the Obama plan, according to the EPA analysis. For West Virginia’s 1.8 million people, that would be equal to at least a couple dozen additional deaths a year.

Trump’s Affordable Clean Energy program would dismantle President Barack Obama’s 2015 Clean Power Plan, which has been caught up in court battles without yet being implemented.