Asbestos at the Robert Moses Niagara Hydroelectric Power Station in Lewiston, New York

At the edge of the Niagara Gorge, approximately four and a half miles downstream from one of the most famous waterfalls on earth, stands the largest hydroelectric power plant in New York State and one of the most powerful in the entire Western Hemisphere. The Robert Moses Niagara Hydroelectric Power Station in Lewiston, New York, is still generating electricity for millions of New Yorkers more than six decades after it first came online.

Commissioned in 1961 with 13 turbine-generator units, the plant diverts water from the Niagara River through a gated intake tunnel for power generation before discharging it back into the river, contributing to the project’s total capacity of up to 2.6 gigawatts of clean, renewable electricity. With an installed capacity of 2,525 megawatts and an average annual net generation of nearly 16 million megawatt-hours, the plant operates at a capacity factor of 71.9 percent, a staggering output that has anchored New York’s electrical grid for generations.

But for the thousands of workers who built, staffed, and maintained this extraordinary facility across more than sixty years of continuous operation, the Robert Moses plant carries a legacy that extends far beyond its engineering achievements. Woven into the infrastructure of this mighty powerhouse from its earliest days of construction was a material that has since driven diagnoses of mesothelioma and lung cancer among the workers who served it: asbestos.

Built During the Asbestos Era

The Robert Moses Niagara Power Station would not exist were it not for one of the most dramatic industrial disasters in New York history. When the Schoellkopf Power Station collapsed into the Niagara Gorge on June 7, 1956, it wiped out in seconds nearly 25 percent of the city’s tax base, delivering a devastating blow to the area economy. More than 60 percent of the station was reduced to twisted girders, rock and rubble in the lower Niagara River. One worker, a machinist named Richard Draper, was killed by falling debris. The grid lost 400,000 kilowatts of power and damage was estimated at $100 million.

The response was immediate and massive. To replace the Schoellkopf Power Station, the New York State Power Authority devoted itself to the construction of a new power station with a giant reservoir to be located further downstream near Lewiston. This power plant was estimated to cost $800 million and took three years to build. Construction began on March 18, 1958, as part of the Niagara Power Project authorized by the Niagara Redevelopment Act of 1957.

The scale of that construction was breathtaking. The Power Authority employed an army of 11,700 workers, temporarily swelling the population of Niagara Falls to a record 102,000 in the 1960 national census. The sheer scale of the project often left the workers dumbstruck. The build-out required extensive civil engineering, including the excavation of two massive underground conduits spanning 7.5 miles each to transport water from intake structures near the Niagara River to the plant site in Lewiston, along with construction of a forebay and the installation of 13 generators in the main powerhouse.

Those 11,700 workers built one of the greatest hydroelectric facilities in the world. But they did so during the peak era of asbestos use, a time when the material was standard throughout power generation infrastructure, and when no warning was given about what it could do to the lungs of the people who handled it.

Asbestos at the Heart of the Powerhouse

The Robert Moses Niagara Hydroelectric Power Station is a major hydroelectric plant, built between 1957 and 1961 to replace the Schoellkopf Power Station. It is still active today and operates by utilizing the Niagara River to generate power. Throughout the decades of its construction and operation, asbestos was embedded throughout the plant’s critical systems.

The Niagara Falls hydroelectric plant is the second-largest of its kind in the United States. Many power plants constructed before the 1980s relied heavily on asbestos for insulation. Asbestos was commonly used around turbines, boilers, pipes, and electrical components due to its heat-resistant properties. Workers responsible for maintaining or repairing these systems often unknowingly inhaled asbestos fibers.

At a plant of the Robert Moses station’s scale, with 13 massive turbine-generator units, miles of underground conduits, a vast forebay reservoir, and a powerhouse structure described at the time of its construction as one of the largest buildings in the world, the scope of asbestos use was enormous. Every turbine in the plant’s main powerhouse was insulated with asbestos-containing materials. Every pump, valve, and pipe fitting that moved water through the facility’s complex hydraulic systems depended on asbestos packing and gaskets to maintain the seals necessary for safe operation. The electrical equipment that stepped up and transmitted the plant’s output to the state grid was insulated and fireproofed with asbestos-containing materials throughout.

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.

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. There were also hundreds of pumps in powerhouses. These pumps were insulated with asbestos on the outside of the pump. On the inside, they contained casing gaskets and flange gaskets. Pumps also used packing in glands to seal the pump. When pumps were cleaned, inspected, repaired, or replaced, the asbestos covering on the pump was disturbed. Additionally, pump gaskets would need to be removed and replaced when pumps were repaired. Packing material would wear and need to be repaired and replaced on a regular basis. All of these maintenance activities caused asbestos fibers to become loose and easily inhaled or ingested.

An Army of Workers Exposed

The 11,700 construction workers who built the Robert Moses plant in the late 1950s were only the first wave. In the decades that followed, a steady workforce of NYPA employees, union tradespeople, and independent contractors maintained, upgraded, and operated the facility, each of them potentially exposed to the asbestos-containing materials installed during construction and added throughout successive rounds of maintenance and renovation.

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 plant’s sheer size multiplied the risk. With 13 turbine-generator units to maintain, each requiring periodic overhaul, gasket replacement, insulation inspection, and pump servicing, the number of individual exposure events across the plant’s operational history is incalculable. Every maintenance shutdown, every emergency repair, every insulation replacement brought workers into direct contact with materials that released asbestos fibers into the air of the powerhouse.

The risk did not stay within the plant’s walls. Workers carried asbestos fibers home on their work clothing, hair, and boots and exposed their families to secondary contamination, a well-documented pathway to asbestos-related disease that extended the reach of the Robert Moses plant’s asbestos legacy into the homes and lives of workers’ families across Niagara County and the broader western New York region.

Lack of Warning

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 construction of the Robert Moses plant began in 1958, more than three decades after the dangers of asbestos had been clearly established in the medical literature. The manufacturers of the turbine insulation, pump gaskets, valve packing, and pipe covering that were installed in the powerhouse had access to that literature. They chose not to act on it. The 11,700 workers who built the plant, and the thousands more who maintained it across subsequent decades, paid the price for that choice.

A Western New York Legacy of Illness

Western New York, home to the Robert Moses plant, carries a particularly heavy burden of asbestos-related disease. In New York State, some of the highest mesothelioma death rates are found in Western New York, particularly in the Buffalo region. This area was once home to numerous factories, power plants, and shipyards where asbestos-containing materials were commonly used. Workers in these environments were often exposed to airborne asbestos fibers for years.

The Robert Moses Niagara Power Station sits at the center of that regional legacy as the largest single industrial employer in Niagara County for much of the twentieth century, and a facility whose workforce drew from the communities of Lewiston, Niagara Falls, Youngstown, and the surrounding towns. The asbestos diagnoses emerging from that workforce are part of a broader pattern of industrial harm that has left an indelible mark on Western New York.

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 NYPA operates a large number of generating facilities, where exposure to this cancer-causing material has occurred.

The Disease That Waits Decades

Mesothelioma, the aggressive and incurable cancer of the tissue lining surrounding the lungs, abdomen, or heart, is caused almost exclusively by asbestos exposure and is defined by a latency period that can span 20 to 50 years or more between first exposure and first diagnosis. A construction worker who helped excavate the plant’s underground conduits in 1958 or install its turbine-generators in 1960 may have worked for decades in apparent good health, retiring without any sign of the disease that was slowly developing in his lung tissue.

Across hydroelectric, nuclear, and fossil fuel plants throughout the state, exposure has placed many workers at increased risk for mesothelioma, asbestosis, and lung cancer. For workers who were present at the Robert Moses plant during its construction and earliest years of operation, the latency period has long since elapsed, and diagnoses have been arriving for years. But for workers who came to the plant later, performing maintenance and upgrades through the 1970s and 1980s, the window of maximum diagnostic risk is current.

Even brief or intermittent exposure carries risk. A contractor who worked a single maintenance shutdown at the Robert Moses plant, or a laborer who spent one season helping with a turbine overhaul, may have accumulated sufficient exposure in that limited time to set the disease’s slow clock in motion.

Seeking Justice

If you or someone you love worked at the New York State Power Authority Robert Moses Niagara Hydroelectric Power Station in Lewiston, New York, whether during its original construction in the late 1950s, during the plant’s decades of continuous operation, or in any capacity as a maintenance worker, contractor, or union tradesperson, and have since been diagnosed with mesothelioma, lung cancer, asbestosis, or another asbestos-related illness, significant legal options for compensation 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 turbine insulation, pump gaskets, pipe covering, and other asbestos-containing products used at the Robert Moses plant bear significant legal accountability for the harm those products caused, separate from NYPA’s own institutional responsibilities. An experienced asbestos attorney can review your work history, identify the specific manufacturers 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.

Statutes of limitations govern asbestos claims in New York State, and the window to file can close.