Asbestos at the Gregory B. Jarvis Plant in Hinckley, New York (Hinckley)

The Hinckley Dam is located on the shores of Hinckley Reservoir in Oneida County, where the Mohawk Valley meets the foothills of the Adirondacks. It was built in the early 1900s, creating Hinckley Reservoir for the purpose of providing water to the Erie Barge Canal System, the predecessor of the current New York Barge Canal. For decades, the dam served that singular purpose, controlling water flow and feeding the canal system that had defined commerce in upstate New York for generations.

In August 1982, NYPA received a 40-year license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to construct and operate a 9-megawatt power project on the Hinckley Reservoir and dam located in Herkimer and Oneida counties. The small hydroelectric facility began supplying electricity to the state’s power grid in 1986. The Jarvis project, which features two turbine-generator units, began operating in 1986 along the Erie Canal and is named in honor of an astronaut from the Mohawk Valley who was killed that year aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. Gregory B. Jarvis was a 41-year-old payload specialist from the Mohawk Valley who perished aboard the Challenger in January 1986. The naming of the plant in his honor gave the facility a poignancy that connected it to one of the most tragic moments in American spaceflight history.

A Plant Built at the Tail End of the Asbestos Era

The Gregory B. Jarvis Plant was constructed and commissioned in the mid-1980s, the precise moment when the industrial world was beginning to reckon with the full scope of the asbestos crisis, but when many asbestos-containing materials were still in common use throughout power generation infrastructure. Located in the Town of Remsen in Oneida County, the Jarvis plant is part of a fleet of four small, clean hydroelectric facilities NYPA developed in the 1980s to reduce New York’s dependence on foreign oil.

Like its sister facilities, the Ashokan Project in Ulster County, the Crescent Plant on the Mohawk River, and the Vischer Ferry Plant in Saratoga County, the Jarvis Plant was built using the same construction standards and the same materials that had defined the utility industry’s approach to power generation for decades. And asbestos was still central to those standards. It is a common misconception that asbestos was primarily a hazard of coal-fired or steam-generating plants. In truth, asbestos is also common in the majority of hydroelectric facilities in North America. Asbestos was first mined and imported for industrial use in North America in the 1850s, even before the first hydroelectric facility was built.

In a hydroelectric powerhouse, the turbines and generators that convert the energy of falling water into electricity reach significant operating temperatures, requiring thermal insulation and fireproofing throughout. The pumps, valves, piping, and electrical equipment that support those generators were built with and surrounded by asbestos-containing materials as industry standard, materials that, when disturbed during maintenance, repair, or renovation, released microscopic fibers into the air that workers breathed.

Asbestos in Every Corner of the Powerhouse

The range of asbestos-containing materials present at a facility like the Jarvis Plant was broad. Generating stations produce electricity by a moving fluid such as water, steam, combustion gases, or air, pushing through a series of blades, creating rotation. The generator then converts the mechanical energy of the spinning blades into electrical energy. As expected, the machinery put in place to create this energy reaches extremely hot temperatures. Although health issues related to asbestos began being documented in 1906, any plant built between the 1930s and into the 1980s still used asbestos products to prevent fires and protect the machinery, as asbestos is an effective insulator for intense heat.

The turbine-generator units at the heart of the Jarvis Plant were primary sources of asbestos exposure. Turbines used asbestos to insulate the inside and outside of the turbine, often in the form of blankets or thermal insulation. Turbines were connected to numerous pumps and valves which required asbestos-containing packing and gaskets. When turbines were inspected and maintained, these materials had to be disturbed, exposing power plant workers to asbestos.

The pumps and valves that regulated the flow of water through the facility presented their own persistent hazards. There were hundreds of pumps in powerhouses including boiler feed, steam, water, oil, chemical, and cooling pumps. These pumps were insulated with asbestos on the outside of the pump. They also contained casing gaskets and flange gaskets. Pumps also used packing in glands to seal the pump. When pumps were opened up to be cleaned, inspected, repaired, or replaced, the asbestos covering on the pump was disturbed.

The associated substation, located on the north side of Route 365, represented an additional point of exposure for electrical workers who maintained the high-voltage equipment stepping up the plant’s output for delivery to the grid. Electrical cable insulated with asbestos-containing materials, switchgear containing asbestos components, and transformer equipment packed with asbestos were all features of substations constructed during this era, placing the electricians and linemen who worked there at risk alongside the powerhouse workers themselves.

A Century Old Dam

The Jarvis Plant’s asbestos story is uniquely complicated by the age of the infrastructure on which it was built. Hinckley Dam dates to the early twentieth century, and the reservoir it created has been a working component of New York’s water supply and canal systems for more than a hundred years. The installation of NYPA’s generating facility in the early 1980s required construction crews to work within and alongside dam infrastructure that predated modern asbestos regulations by decades.

Any renovation or upgrade at a facility built with asbestos-containing materials carries the potential for renewed exposure as workers disturb old insulation, remove aging gaskets, and work in proximity to decades-old materials that may have degraded over time into a more friable and more dangerous state. For a site like the Jarvis Plant, where a new generating facility was grafted onto a century-old dam, the layering of construction eras created a particularly complex asbestos landscape for workers to navigate.

That complexity has continued into recent decades. The penstocks at the Hinckley Reservoir had not been re-lined since their construction in 1986 and were required to be upgraded by the end of 2024 as part of a mandate from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission tied to the operation of the Jarvis plant. The relining project involved de-watering and construction work within the penstocks. Workers involved in that relining project, and in the 2019 storm damage restoration work that brought maintenance crews to the site, potentially encountered asbestos hazards decades after the plant’s original commission.

Who Was Exposed?

The workforce at the Gregory B. Jarvis Plant spanned trades and job titles, and the asbestos hazard touched workers across that range. Power plant workers maintain many types of equipment at power generation and distribution plants. These workers include pipefitters, electricians, maintenance mechanics, boiler operators and tenders, plumbers, welders, and laborers. Workers were exposed to asbestos when installing, inspecting, maintaining, repairing, removing, and replacing boilers, pumps, valves, heaters, electrical boxes, and other equipment.

Insulators, pipefitters, and other utility workers who routinely fitted, drilled, and cut asbestos products during the course of their jobs now find themselves at risk of mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases. The cutting, drilling, and sanding of asbestos is what causes the toxic fibers to become airborne and inhaled.

Laborers who assisted skilled tradespeople and cleaned up after maintenance work were exposed to the same airborne fibers as the tradespeople themselves, often without any special recognition of the risk. And as at every NYPA facility of this era, the danger traveled home, on work clothing, in hair, or on boots, and into the households and lives of workers’ families who had no knowledge of what was arriving with them at the end of each shift.

Named for a Hero, Built With a Hazard

There is a particular irony in the Gregory B. Jarvis Plant’s story. The facility was named to honor a man who died in the most public and visible of ways, a national tragedy witnessed live on television by millions. Yet the workers who built and maintained the facility named in his honor faced their own slow-moving tragedy: asbestos-related diseases like mesothelioma and lung cancer.

Plant workers who maintained, repaired, or operated this machinery were inevitably exposed to these toxic fibers. The NYPA operates a large number of generating facilities where exposure to this cancer-causing material has occurred.

Workers who were employed at power stations prior to the 1990s are at a high risk of developing mesothelioma, lung cancer, and other asbestos-related diseases. The companies that made and sold asbestos products knew asbestos was dangerous as far back as the 1920s, yet continued selling their products for decades without warning workers or educating them about safe handling procedures.

The Disease That Waits

Mesothelioma, the aggressive and incurable cancer of the tissue lining surrounding the lungs, abdomen, or heart, is caused almost exclusively by asbestos exposure. Power plant workers are eight times more likely to die of mesothelioma than the general population. The risk is especially high for employees who worked in power plants before the 1990s, when asbestos was widely used for its heat-resistant and insulating properties. Today, large numbers of power plant workers from that era are receiving mesothelioma diagnoses, as the cancer has a 10 to 60-year latency period.

For a worker who participated in the original construction and installation of the Jarvis Plant’s turbine-generator units in the mid-1980s, or who performed maintenance in the years and decades that followed, that latency window places the present moment squarely in the period of greatest diagnostic risk. A construction worker or pipefitter who worked at the Hinckley site in 1985 or 1986 may be only now experiencing the first symptoms of a disease set in motion by exposures that took place nearly forty years ago.

Seeking Justice

If you or someone you love worked at the New York State Power Authority Gregory B. Jarvis Plant at Hinckley Reservoir, whether during its original construction, during maintenance cycles and scheduled shutdowns, during the 2019 storm damage restoration, or during the 2024 penstock relining project, and has since been diagnosed with mesothelioma, lung cancer, asbestosis, or another asbestos-related illness, legal options may be available to you.

People who have been diagnosed with mesothelioma are victims of the asbestos industry and have the right to seek compensation from the companies that caused their illness. The manufacturers of the specific asbestos-containing products used at the Jarvis Plant bear significant legal accountability for the harm those products caused. An experienced asbestos attorney can review your work history, identify the companies whose products were present at the facility, and pursue compensation through personal injury litigation or asbestos trust fund claims at no upfront cost to you or your family.