Most new coal mines and coal plants are built in very rural areas that are struggling economically.  While fifty or a hundred additional jobs is not a big deal in the city, it is a revolution in a small rural community.  In communities where good jobs are scarce and the chance of new manufacturing jobs is almost nil in a global economy, where high school graduates have to move to (or drive to) the city to get any kind of job, where earnest elected officials struggle to meet local needs with meager tax revenue, the prospect of new jobs and a doubling or tripling of the tax base looks like manna from heaven.  And if you watch the small towns where plants or mines are opened it is clear that they benefit economically.  On the other hand, these facilities bring with them significant health and environmental costs which disproportionately affect the local area.  There is a tension between those who want the economic development, sometimes at any cost, and those that fear they will suffer from the health and environmental harms.  We don’t think citizens should have to choose between economic development and degradation to their health and environment.  Efficiency measures and renewables yield more economic benefit than a coal plant, but those benefits will not be realized in communities where a plant or mine displaced by other generation methods would have been located.

• Comparison of coal, gas, and wind plant economic impacts in the state where they are built.  Chart.
• A chart showing that the majority of the money spent to construct a coal plant flows out of the state. 
• See Water pollution section HE  B for local impacts to water supply.
• Air pollution from two Massachusetts coal-fired power plants contributes to particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and ozone exposure over a large region. The health risks are greatest for people living closer to the plants. Twenty percent of the total health impact occurs on 8 percent of the population that lives within 30 miles of the facilities. Harvard Gazette
• Watch the film Burning the Future to see the local health and environmental impacts of mining.