Asbestos at the New York State Power Authority Ashokan Project in Ulster County
You may be entitled to receive compensation. Mesothelioma and lung cancer victims & their families have been awarded over $1 million+ from easy access to funds. Call us today to apply.
Over the past 30 years, we've helped 1,000s of families claim the compensation they deserve with no upfront costs to them.
In the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in Ulster County, New York, the Ashokan Reservoir is one of the most scenic and historically significant bodies of water in the state. Situated only minutes from Belluck Law’s Woodstock office, the Ashokan Reservoir is the oldest New York City-owned reservoir in the Catskill Mountains, completed in the early twentieth century and placed into service in 1915. For decades, it served purely as a water supply. But in 1982, the water fountain at Ashokan replaced the original Catskill Aqueduct aeration system during the installation of two hydroelectric turbines by NYPA. The turbines produce 4,700 kilowatts of electrical power for surrounding electrical grids.
Dedication ceremonies were held in 1982 at the Ashokan Hydropower Project, the first in a series of small hydroelectric facilities that NYPA would develop to reduce New York State’s dependence on foreign oil. The facility is located below ground between the reservoir and the fountain.
Table of Contents
To understand the asbestos risk at Ashokan, it helps to understand the organization behind it. Founded in 1931 by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the New York State Power Authority has been responsible for generating and supplying New Yorkers with the energy needed to fuel their everyday lives. Then-Governor Roosevelt’s vision was explicitly democratic in its ambition: returning the power of New York’s waterways to its people. What he could not have foreseen was that the infrastructure built to fulfill that vision would expose generations of workers to a carcinogen that would claim their health decades later.
The New York State Power Authority, like many other similar facilities during the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, utilized toxic asbestos materials in its construction, maintenance, and use. 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 by its unsuspecting victims.
The Ashokan Project is one of four small operating hydroelectric power projects operated in New York State under NYPA’s umbrella, alongside the Crescent Plant, the Gregory B. Jarvis Plant, and the Vischer Ferry Plant. These four small hydro facilities have a net capability of 10 megawatts. Small in scale compared to NYPA’s flagship hydroelectric complexes on the Niagara and St. Lawrence rivers, the Ashokan Project was nonetheless built using the same construction standards and the same materials that defined the utility industry’s approach to power generation throughout the twentieth century, and asbestos was central to those standards.
Asbestos in Hydroelectric Facilities
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 hydropower plants, asbestos was used as insulation for generators and turbines and sprayed on piping and conduits. By the mid-20th century, it was used in fire-retardant coatings, concrete, bricks, pipes, gaskets, pipe insulation, ceiling insulation, fireproof drywall, flooring and roofing.
At a below-ground installation like the Ashokan Project, where space is confined and ventilation is limited, the conditions for asbestos fiber accumulation were particularly favorable. Generators and turbines operating in enclosed underground chambers required insulation to manage the heat they produced. Piping and conduits were wrapped in asbestos-containing materials. Gaskets and packing used in the facility’s pumps and valves contained asbestos. And when any of that equipment needed to be maintained, repaired, or replaced, the disturbance of those materials sent invisible fibers into the air of a space where they could only accumulate.
This meant that workers at Ashokan faced repeated exposures to asbestos-containing materials.
The Workers Most at Risk
The trades most directly exposed at facilities like the Ashokan Project were those whose work demanded hands-on engagement with the plant’s mechanical and electrical systems. 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.
At a hydroelectric facility, the turbines and generators are the heart of the operation. There were thousands and thousands of valves located in power plants. Valves control the flow of material through pipes and to various pieces of equipment. Valves are insulated on the outside with asbestos. 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 and used packing in glands to seal the pump, all lined with asbestos. When pumps were opened up to be cleaned, inspected, repaired, or replaced, the asbestos covering on the pump was disturbed and became airborne and easily inhaled or ingested.
In an underground powerhouse like Ashokan, where airflow was naturally restricted, the fiber concentrations generated by such work could be significantly higher than in surface-level facilities with better ventilation. Workers had no way of knowing what they were breathing. Most performed their tasks without masks, without protective clothing, and without any warning from their employers or the manufacturers of the materials they handled.
The risk was not limited to those who worked directly on the plant’s equipment. Workers who transported materials in and out of the underground facility, supervisors conducting inspections, and laborers involved in general upkeep were all present in an environment where asbestos fibers were routinely made airborne and increased in concentration with time. And as with every other industrial jobsite of the era, the fibers traveled home on work clothes, on skin, or in hair, exposing the families of Ashokan workers to secondary exposure without their knowledge or consent.
Upgrades that Renewed the Risk
The asbestos hazard at Ashokan did not end with the original 1982 installation. The New York Power Authority upgraded its below-ground hydropower facilities in 2014, requiring work crews to update control mechanisms on the two hydropower turbine units. 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.
The Public Authorities Law that made way for the Ashokan power plant to be built was amended in 1978 to permit the Power Authority to develop small-scale hydroelectric projects. This legislation was forward-thinking in its environmental intent, but it did not account for what would become a long legacy of asbestos exposure.
Mesothelioma Can Take Years to Develop
Mesothelioma, the aggressive and incurable cancer of the tissue lining surrounding the lungs, abdomen, or heart is caused 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.
For a worker who participated in the original construction and installation of the Ashokan Project’s turbines in 1982, 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 technician who worked in the underground powerhouse in the 1980s or 1990s may only now be experiencing the first symptoms of a disease set in motion by exposures that took place a generation ago.
Plant workers who maintained, repaired, or operated this machinery were inevitably exposed to these toxic fibers, and are unfortunately being diagnosed with mesothelioma, lung cancer, asbestosis, and other asbestos-related diseases. The connection between those long-ago work shifts and a present-day diagnosis may not be immediately apparent, but the medical and legal record is unambiguous.
Seeking Accountability
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. 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.
If you or someone you love worked at the New York State Power Authority Ashokan Hydroelectric Project in Ulster County, whether during its original construction in 1982, during subsequent maintenance cycles, or during later upgrade work, and has since been diagnosed with mesothelioma or lung cancer, legal options may be available. Statutes of limitations govern asbestos claims, and the window to file can close. An experienced asbestos attorney can help identify the specific manufacturers whose products were used at the facility and pursue compensation on your behalf, at no upfront cost.
