About Cayuga Generating Station | Cayuga, IN | Duke Energy Indiana
Industrial Coal-Fired Power Plant with Documented Asbestos-Containing Material History
The Cayuga Generating Station sits along the Wabash River near Cayuga in Vermillion County, Indiana. Duke Energy Indiana LLC, a subsidiary of Duke Energy Corporation, operates the facility.
Key facts:
- Unit 1 came online in 1969; Unit 2 in 1970, with combined peak capacity of approximately 1,005 megawatts
- Construction began in the late 1950s, when asbestos-containing materials were standard throughout industrial power generation
- Employed hundreds of workers over decades — permanent plant staff, maintenance crews, and contract tradespeople
- Previously operated as PSI Energy and Public Service Indiana before Duke Energy acquired ownership
Coal-fired power plants built during this era reportedly used asbestos-containing materials throughout their infrastructure. Workers employed during construction, initial commissioning, and subsequent maintenance operations may have been exposed to airborne asbestos fibers.
Many workers at Cayuga were not Indiana residents. Throughout the plant’s operational history, skilled tradespeople from neighboring states — traveling members of Heat and Frost Insulators Local 1, UA Local 157, and Boilermakers Local 374, among others — were dispatched to Indiana facilities for construction and maintenance outages. Former Cayuga workers who lived and worked in the Ohio River industrial corridor — including the Indianapolis metro area, southern Illinois, and communities along the neighboring states banks — retain legal rights in their home states regardless of where the exposure allegedly occurred.
Indiana residents: Your home-state legal rights travel with you. A Indiana diagnosis triggers Indiana’s statute of limitations and Indiana’s legal protections — even if your alleged asbestos exposure occurred across the state line in Indiana. Do not assume that because you worked at an Indiana facility, Indiana law doesn’t apply to you. Contact a Indiana asbestos attorney today.
Why Coal-Fired Power Plants Used Asbestos-Containing Materials
Asbestos-containing products became industry standard in coal-fired power generation because of specific industrial properties:
- Heat resistance — withstands temperatures exceeding 2,000°F
- Tensile strength — can be woven into textiles and formed into gaskets and seals
- Thermal and electrical insulation — prevents heat transfer and allows safe electrical distribution
- Chemical resistance — largely inert when exposed to industrial chemicals
- Low cost — mined domestically and imported affordably
The U.S. power generation industry ranked among the most intensive users of asbestos-containing materials during the mid-twentieth century. Manufacturers, A.W. Chesterton,** and gaskets and packing reportedly supplied asbestos-containing products that may have been installed at Cayuga and similar facilities throughout Indiana and neighboring states.
The same manufacturers who may have supplied asbestos-containing materials to Cayuga also reportedly supplied comparable facilities across the Ohio River industrial corridor — including comparable regional power stations and comparable regional power stations in Missouri, regional steel operations in the regional industrial corridor, Illinois, and industrial operations at regional chemical operations facilities in the Indianapolis-area. Workers whose careers took them across multiple facilities in this corridor may have accumulated significant cumulative asbestos-containing material exposure over time — and that cross-facility history is directly relevant to the strength of your legal claim.
What litigation has established: Asbestos manufacturers allegedly knew about lethal hazards long before workers received any warning. Internal documents recovered in litigation show that manufacturers including and concealed evidence of asbestos’s carcinogenic properties from workers for decades.
General Equipment at Cayuga Generating Station | Cayuga, IN | Duke Energy Indiana
The equipment below represents the systems and infrastructure documented or typically present at this facility during the era when asbestos-containing materials were specified in industrial construction. This is general facility-equipment reference — not a legal attribution of any specific product, manufacturer, or exposure event to this facility. Material-category and manufacturer information is addressed in the AsbestosIndex Product Crosswalk linked under the records table below.
Documented Asbestos Evidence — Indiana
The records below are verified, state-documented asbestos removals at this facility. Each entry represents a regulated abatement project where the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) was notified under federal NESHAP rules, the work was logged, and the asbestos-containing material was confirmed and removed under regulated conditions. These are not allegations or estimates — they are paper records tying documented asbestos-containing material to this specific site.
No IDEM NESHAP abatement notifications have been identified for this facility in current public records. Per the framing above, absence of state-agency documentation should not be read as absence of asbestos — only as absence of a formal, regulated abatement event meeting reporting thresholds. Workers who recall encountering pipe insulation, block insulation, gaskets, or other asbestos-era construction materials at this facility may still have viable claims regardless of whether a state record exists.
Material Categories in Documented Records
The materials documented above (and similar asbestos-containing materials commonly encountered in records of this type) appear in the AsbestosIndex catalog with historical manufacturer and trust-fund information. Click a category to view manufacturers historically associated with that material:
Indiana — Filing Deadline & Next Steps
Indiana law gives mesothelioma and asbestos-disease claimants 2 years from the date of medical diagnosis to file a personal-injury lawsuit (Ind. Code § 34-11-2-4). For wrongful-death claims after an asbestos-related death, the filing window is 2 years from the date of death (Ind. Code § 34-23-1-1). The two deadlines run on separate tracks — preserving one does not extend the other.
The personal-injury clock runs from diagnosis, not from exposure. Mesothelioma latency is typically 20 to 50 years, so workers exposed in the 1950s–1980s are being diagnosed today.
Practical first steps
- Document what you remember. Pay stubs, W-2s, union cards, photographs, coworker names, and dates of employment. The WorkChain widget on this page can save a copy you can email yourself.
- Preserve medical records. Pathology reports, biopsy results, imaging, and pulmonary-function tests are central to both civil claims and trust-fund filings.
- Identify household members. Spouses who laundered work clothing and children of plant workers are eligible for secondary-exposure claims when diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease.
- Speak with an asbestos attorney with Indiana experience. The first conversation is free and confidential. Asbestos trust-fund claims and civil claims run on different tracks — both can be pursued in parallel.
Asbestos-Related Diseases — Indiana
Asbestos fiber exposure can cause several specific diseases that typically appear decades after the original exposure. The latency period — the gap between exposure and diagnosis — usually runs 20 to 50 years. That's why workers exposed in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s are receiving diagnoses today.
Mesothelioma
A rare, aggressive cancer that affects the lining of the lungs (pleural mesothelioma), abdomen (peritoneal), or heart (pericardial). Mesothelioma is almost exclusively caused by asbestos exposure, which is why a mesothelioma diagnosis often points directly to historical workplace exposure. Average latency from first exposure to diagnosis is 30-50 years.
Asbestosis
A chronic, non-cancerous scarring of lung tissue caused by inhaled asbestos fibers. Asbestosis causes progressive shortness of breath, persistent cough, and reduced lung function. It does not improve with treatment, and it is a recognized basis for a claim under most trust schedules and civil claims.
Lung Cancer
Asbestos exposure significantly increases the risk of lung cancer, particularly when combined with a history of smoking. Asbestos-related lung cancer is compensable under the same trust schedules and civil claim avenues as mesothelioma.
Other Recognized Diseases
Pleural plaques, pleural thickening, laryngeal cancer, ovarian cancer, and certain gastrointestinal cancers are also recognized as asbestos-related under various trust schedules and case-law authorities, though eligibility and proof requirements vary by claim type.
If you have any of these diagnoses and you worked at this facility, lived with someone who did, or were exposed in any documented capacity, you may have a claim worth pursuing. Speak with an attorney before assuming you don't qualify.
Data Sources — Indiana
Information about facility equipment, industrial materials, and occupational records referenced on this page is drawn from publicly available sources where applicable, including:
- EPA ECHO Facility Compliance Database — enforcement and compliance records for industrial facilities
- OSHA Establishment Search — federal workplace inspection history
- EIA Form 860 Plant Data — power-plant equipment and ownership records (where applicable)
- Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) NESHAP asbestos abatement notification records
- Published asbestos trial and trust fund records (publicly filed court documents)
- AsbestosIndex Product & Manufacturer Crosswalk — historical asbestos-containing product schedules linked to manufacturers
If specific equipment or product claims in this article are sourced from a non-public database, the source is identified parenthetically within the text above.