Surface mining, with its accompanying dust, noise, truck traffic, and land disruption, generally conflicts with most urban land uses. Urban development, however, is dependent upon the availability of nearby mineral resources for the construction of roads and buildings. As a result of this conflict, many urban areas are now faced with rapidly rising construction costs, partly because of a failure to recognize and use aggregate resources before building over such resources or making them unavailable by zoning.
Land subsidence increases the area in the Texas Coastal Zone which will be inundated by marine waters from hurricane flooding. Storm surge from a Carla-sized hurricane in 1976 would flood at least 25 square miles more land than Hurricane Carla did in 1961.