WASHINGTON — The Trump administration moved to dismantle another major piece of President Barack Obama’s environmental legacy on Tuesday, proposing to dramatically scale back restrictions on climate-changing emissions from coal-fired power plants even as it acknowledged that could lead to more premature deaths and serious illnesses.

The Trump plan broadly increases the authority given states to decide how and how much to regulate coal power plants. The Environmental Protection Agency said the move “empowers states, promotes energy independence and facilitates economic growth and job creation.”

Bill Wehrum, head of the EPA’s air office, said the administration rejects any suggestion the agency has a broad legal duty to combat climate change through regulation of power grids or promoting clean energy.

Environmentalists and other opponents said they expect legal challenges, arguing the Trump administration is abdicating its responsibilities under the Clean Air Act as set by Congress and the courts.

The Natural Resources Defense Council called the replacement proposal President Donald Trump’s “Dirty Power Plan.”

The Trump administration is emphasizing “coal at all costs,” said Gina McCarthy, EPA administrator when the Obama plan was developed.

“There is no other country in the world that is looking at coal as its future — they are all running to clean energy to save money, create jobs and save lives today and protect our children’s future. Climate change is real,” McCarthy said in a statement.

EPA officials said they could give no firm projections for the health effects of the Trump administration replacement plan because that will depend on what states decide to do in regulating power plants within their borders.

But models provided by the agency estimate that under the Trump plan, 300 to 1,500 premature deaths would be avoided a year by 2030. The Obama plan says 1,500 and 3,600 premature deaths would be avoided.

The models for the Trump plan also project thousands of additional major asthma attacks and hundreds more heart attacks compared with the Obama plan, which has been hung up in the courts.

EPA called the Obama-era regulations on coal power plants “overly prescriptive and burdensome.”

Combined with the EPA’s proposal earlier this month to ease gas-mileage requirements for vehicles, the move may actually increase the country’s climate-changing emissions, according to some former top EPA officials, environmental groups and other opponents.

Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey cited this summer’s wildfires and increasing droughts and coastal flooding as evidence that man-made climate change from burning coal and other fossil fuels is already upon the U.S.

“Once again, this administration is choosing polluters’ profits over public health and safety,” he said.

Scientists say that without extensive study they cannot directly link a single weather event to climate change, but that it is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme events such as storms, droughts, floods and wildfires.