Asbestos at the Dresden Power Plant (Greenidge Generating Station)
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On the western shore of Seneca Lake, in the village of Dresden in Yates County, New York, the Dresden Power Plant burned fuel generating electricity and powering communities across the Finger Lakes region for decades. Constructed in 1937 by the New York State Electric & Gas Corporation, Greenidge featured four coal-fired power-generating units. The plant regularly expanded its operations and generating capabilities, with additional power units installed in 1942, 1950, and 1953. Over the decades that followed, the plant changed hands, changed fuels, and eventually became a facility for cryptocurrency mining. While in operation, the plant was a significant source of asbestos exposures among those who worked there, their families, and the community at large.
A Coal Plant Built on Asbestos
Table of Contents
At one time, the Greenidge Power Plant consisted of six coal-fired boilers, which provided steam to power four turbine generators. The plant had a generating capacity of over 200 megawatts. To keep that equipment operating safely under the extreme temperatures generated by burning coal around the clock, asbestos was used extensively throughout the facility from its earliest years of operation.
Prior to the late 1970s, asbestos-containing materials were utilized at the Greenidge Power Plant as a component in dozens of materials, including pipe covering, insulating cement, and block insulation. Much of the equipment installed at Greenidge was heavily insulated with asbestos. The boiler room, the turbine room, and the pump house near the edge of Seneca Lake were all environments where asbestos was present. It could be found in the insulation wrapping pipes, in the gaskets sealing valves and pumps, in the cement applied to boilers and heat-bearing surfaces throughout the plant.
Greenidge Power Plant utilized coal-fired boilers in order to produce steam. The steam was delivered through pipes to turbine generators, which produced electrical power. In order to minimize heat loss, boilers, generators, pipes and other equipment housed within the steam system were covered in asbestos-containing insulating materials.
How Workers Were Exposed
Workers inhaled or ingested asbestos at Dresden primarily during the tasks of maintenance and repair that were required to keep aging coal-fired equipment running, and those tasks were frequently needed.
During repairs on the steam system, workers removed the insulation in order to access necessary equipment. When the repair procedure was completed, new asbestos-containing insulation was applied. Removing and applying insulation caused asbestos dust and fibers to become airborne.
The plant’s scheduled shutdowns were especially hazardous. The Greenidge Power Plant periodically went into a “shutdown” maintenance period. During a shutdown, maintenance work was performed on equipment in the steam system. Worn asbestos insulation was replaced with new insulation. This process was extremely messy and created large dust clouds. Many workers were not aware of the dangers of exposure to asbestos dust, and they carried on their work without wearing protective masks or clothing.
During emergency repairs and scheduled maintenance, Greenidge employees and independent contractors removed layers of asbestos from the equipment so that the individual machines could be opened up. To ensure that the machinery operated properly, workers would perform maintenance which included removing and replacing asbestos gaskets and packing. Used to prevent leaks and create necessary seals, fresh gaskets were critical to keep power-generating activities uninterrupted.
The workers most directly exposed included those in the trades that brought them into the closest contact with the plant’s steam systems like boilermakers, pipefitters, insulators, electricians, millwrights, and general laborers who worked alongside skilled tradespeople and cleaned up after them. Laborers who were once employed at NYSEG’s power stations were routinely exposed to asbestos-containing materials, including asbestos-containing block insulation, cement, pipe covering, gaskets, and packing material found in pumps and valves. No corner of the plant was truly safe during maintenance cycles because the dust clouds that formed when asbestos insulation was disturbed did not know departmental boundaries.
Corporate History and Asbestos Disturbance Over Time
The Greenidge plant passed through multiple corporate hands over its long history, but the asbestos hazard it carried from its 1937 construction persisted across each ownership change. Originally built in 1937 by the New York State Electric and Gas Corporation to burn coal, the Greenidge power station produced coal-fired electricity until its closure in 2011. Since 1999, the plant has been owned and operated by AES Corporation. In 1985, two turbine generators and three boilers were taken out of service. In 2009, another turbine and boiler were also taken out of service.
Each round of decommissioning brought its own wave of asbestos disturbance with workers removing equipment that had been insulated with asbestos for decades, tearing apart systems that had never been properly abated. In 2011, citing high fuel costs and decreased demand for electricity, the owners declared bankruptcy and shut down the Greenidge power station. Atlas Holdings later bought the power station and converted the plant from coal to natural gas in 2016, a conversion that once again required workers to tear into decades-old infrastructure saturated with asbestos-containing materials.
An Entire Community’s Health at Stake
The harm at Dresden was not confined to those working inside the plant’s walls. In 2008, a study completed by the New York State Department of Health discovered elevated levels of respiratory disease for individuals living in close proximity to the Greenidge Generation plant. Residents of surrounding areas were found to experience incidents of respiratory illness at levels 41 percent higher than New York residents far removed from the Greenidge plant.
That finding is a sobering reminder that industrial hazards do not stay neatly within property lines. Workers who carried asbestos fibers home on their clothing and skin exposed their families to secondary contamination. And the community surrounding Seneca Lake bore health consequences that extended well beyond the plant’s workforce.
The companies that manufactured the products and machinery used at the Greenidge Generation plant were aware of the dangers associated with exposure to airborne dust. Over many decades, scientific advances continued to show a link between exposure to dust and lung disease. Many of these companies, aware of these findings and the dangers posed by their products, took precautions to protect their own workers while failing to warn consumers. Choosing profit over safety, the dangers of asbestos exposure were hidden from Greenidge Generation plant employees, and workers across the country.
Most workers were not aware of the dangers of exposure to the asbestos dust, and performed their work without masks or protective gear. The result, which in hindsight was predictable, was a workforce exposed to a known carcinogen for decades, without any warning or protection.
A Disease that Takes Time to Develop
Mesothelioma, which is the aggressive and incurable cancer linked to asbestos exposure, is a disease defined by a long latency. It can take 20 to 50 years or more after the initial exposure before any symptoms emerge. As a result of their exposure to asbestos-containing materials, many NYSEG workers have developed and died of mesothelioma, lung cancer, and other asbestos-related diseases.
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.
For a worker who spent the 1950s, 60s, or 70s maintaining the Dresden plant’s boilers and steam lines, the diagnostic window is now, meaning that diagnoses tied to work done generations ago are still being seen today. Even those who were present for only a portion of the plant’s coal-fired era are not necessarily safe. Brief but intense exposure during a single shutdown period could be sufficient to set the disease’s long latency in motion.
Seeking Justice
If you or someone you love worked at the Dresden Power Plant, known formally as the Greenidge Generating Station, at any point during its long coal-fired history, and has since been diagnosed with mesothelioma, lung cancer, asbestosis, or another asbestos-related disease, legal options may be available. The manufacturers of asbestos-containing products used at the plant bear significant legal responsibility for the harm those products caused. An experienced asbestos attorney can review your work history, identify the specific products and companies involved, and help you pursue compensation through personal injury lawsuits or asbestos trust fund claims at no upfront cost.
