About E.W. Brown Generating Station | Burgin, KY | Kentucky

E.W. Brown Generating Station is a coal-fired electric power generating facility located in Burgin, Mercer County, Kentucky, operated by Kentucky Utilities Company (KU), a subsidiary of LG&E and KU Energy LLC, ultimately owned by PPL Corporation. Situated on the western shore of Herrington Lake, the plant has anchored Kentucky’s electrical generation infrastructure since mid-twentieth century construction.

Named after Elmer Watts Brown, a longtime president of Kentucky Utilities Company, the facility expanded across multiple decades:

Major Unit Commissioning Timeline:

  • Unit 1 — Commissioned approximately 1957
  • Unit 2 — Commissioned approximately 1959
  • Unit 3 — Commissioned approximately 1962
  • Unit 4 (largest unit) — Commissioned approximately 1971
  • Unit 5 (combined-cycle gas unit) — Added during later modernization

At peak capacity, E.W. Brown ranked among Kentucky’s largest coal-burning power plants, generating over 1,000 megawatts of electricity. Contract workers cycled through the facility for planned outage work, maintenance turnarounds, and capital construction projects — the periods that generated the highest asbestos fiber counts in the plant environment.

Kentucky Utilities retired or converted multiple coal-fired units in recent years due to environmental regulations and market pressures. A solar facility now operates on portions of the property. Decades of coal-fired operations from the 1950s through the 1990s created the asbestos exposure conditions this guide addresses.

General Equipment at E.W. Brown Generating Station | Burgin, KY | Kentucky

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.

Boilers View crosswalk › Steam Turbines View crosswalk › Steam Traps View crosswalk › Condensers View crosswalk › Feedwater Heaters View crosswalk › Cooling Towers View crosswalk › Pipe Insulation View crosswalk › Block Insulation View crosswalk › Refractory Lining View crosswalk › Valves View crosswalk › Gaskets View crosswalk › Pumps View crosswalk ›

Documented Asbestos Evidence

The records below are verified, state-documented asbestos removals at this facility. Each entry represents a regulated abatement project where the Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection (Kentucky DEP) 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 Kentucky DEP 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:

Thermal System Insulation View crosswalk › Asbestos-Cement Board View crosswalk › Pipe Insulation View crosswalk › Roofing & Flashing View crosswalk › Spray Fireproofing View crosswalk › Floor Tile & Mastic View crosswalk › Ceiling Tile View crosswalk › Gaskets & Packing View crosswalk ›

Who May Have Been Exposed at E.W. Brown Generating Station | Burgin, KY | Kentucky

Direct and Contract Workforce:

  • Hundreds of direct employees — plant staff, supervisors, maintenance personnel, engineers
  • Thousands of contract workers across multiple decades, including:
    • Thermal insulators affiliated with Heat and Frost Insulators Local 1 (St. Louis, MO) — one of the most active locals supplying insulation labor to industrial facilities across the mid-South and upper Mississippi River valley. Local 1 members reportedly worked at comparable Missouri facilities including Labadie Generating Station (Franklin County, MO) and Portage des Sioux Generating Station (St. Charles County, MO), making them candidates for asbestos trust fund claims spanning multiple facilities.
    • Thermal insulators affiliated with Heat and Frost Insulators Local 27 (Kansas City, MO)
    • Boilermakers affiliated with Boilermakers Local 27 (St. Louis, MO), whose members reportedly traveled for outage and construction work at coal-fired generating stations throughout the region
    • Pipefitters and steamfitters affiliated with Plumbers and Pipefitters UA Local 562 (St. Louis, MO) — one of the largest pipefitting locals in the Mississippi River corridor, whose members reportedly worked at facilities from Missouri power plants to Kentucky industrial sites
    • Pipefitters affiliated with Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 268 (Kansas City, MO)
    • Electricians, millwrights, ironworkers, and laborers from Missouri and Illinois locals

These workers encountered asbestos-containing insulation, gaskets, packing materials, and other products during high-temperature steam line work, boiler maintenance, turbine service, and facility construction projects.

Critical Filing Deadline & Next Steps

Kentucky law gives mesothelioma and asbestos-disease claimants 1 year from the date of medical diagnosis to file a personal-injury lawsuit (KRS § 413.140). For wrongful-death claims after an asbestos-related death, the filing window is 1 year from the date of death (KRS § 413.180). 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

  1. 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.
  2. Preserve medical records. Pathology reports, biopsy results, imaging, and pulmonary-function tests are central to both civil claims and trust-fund filings.
  3. 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.
  4. Speak with an asbestos attorney with Kentucky 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

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 compensation 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.

Cross-State & Regional Corridor Workers

The Mississippi River industrial corridor — stretching from Illinois and Missouri south through Kentucky and Tennessee — created a shared labor market in which union tradespeople routinely crossed state lines for major plant construction and outage work. A Missouri worker’s disease today may reflect cumulative exposure across multiple facilities, and legal claims can account for that cumulative history. Thermal insulators affiliated with Heat and Frost Insulators Local 1 (St. Louis, MO) — one of the most active locals supplying insulation labor to industrial facilities across the mid-South and upper Mississippi River valley — reportedly worked at comparable Missouri facilities including Labadie Generating Station (Franklin County, MO) and Portage des Sioux Generating Station (St. Charles County, MO). Boilermakers affiliated with Boilermakers Local 27 (St. Louis, MO) reportedly traveled for outage and construction work at coal-fired generating stations throughout the region. Pipefitters and steamfitters affiliated with Plumbers and Pipefitters UA Local 562 (St. Louis, MO) — one of the largest pipefitting locals in the Mississippi River corridor — reportedly worked at facilities from Missouri power plants to Kentucky industrial sites.

Data Sources

Information about facility equipment, industrial materials, and occupational records referenced on this page is drawn from publicly available sources where applicable, including:

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.