About Kentucky Utilities Coleman Station Campbellsville Kentucky
Coleman Station is a coal-fired steam electric generating station in Taylor County, near Campbellsville, Kentucky. Kentucky Utilities Company (KU) owned and operated it, later under the LG&E and KU Energy umbrella — today a subsidiary of PPL Corporation.
Coleman Station served as one of KU’s primary generating assets for decades, supplying electricity to central and eastern Kentucky. It operated alongside other KU and LG&E facilities across the Commonwealth, including the E.W. Brown Generating Station in Mercer County and Mill Creek Generating Station in Jefferson County — facilities sharing a similar construction era and comparable asbestos-containing materials histories. Workers who rotated among KU and LG&E facilities, as many contract tradespeople did, may have accumulated asbestos exposure across multiple Kentucky plant sites.
How the Plant Worked
Coleman Station ran as a conventional coal-fired steam generating station, producing electricity through a thermodynamic cycle that depended on:
- High-pressure steam from massive boilers
- Temperatures exceeding 1,000°F throughout the system
- Miles of insulated piping carrying steam across the facility
- Large turbines and generators tied directly to boiler systems
Every component of that system — from the boilers to the miles of interconnecting pipe — may have been built with or coated in asbestos-containing materials (ACMs) during the mid-twentieth century.
Who Worked at Coleman Station
At various points during its operational life, Coleman Station employed dozens to hundreds of workers, including:
- Kentucky Utilities direct employees
- Outside contractors and specialty craft workers
- Union tradespeople brought in for scheduled maintenance, overhauls, and capital projects
Kentucky tradespeople affiliated with unions including Boilermakers Local 40 (Louisville), IBEW Local 369 (Louisville), and Asbestos Workers Local 76 may have worked at Coleman Station during construction, scheduled outages, and capital overhauls. Workers from these locals reportedly traveled among utility, industrial, and manufacturing facilities throughout central and eastern Kentucky, potentially accumulating asbestos exposure at multiple job sites — including Coleman Station, other LG&E and KU power plants, Armco Steel in Ashland, and General Electric Appliance Park in Louisville.
The following products and manufacturers are identified based on materials commonly used at coal-fired power plants of Coleman Station’s construction era, as well as records from asbestos litigation involving comparable Kentucky Utilities and southeastern utility facilities.
Corporation
was historically the largest asbestos products manufacturer in the United States and reportedly supplied asbestos-containing materials to industrial facilities throughout Kentucky — including coal-fired power plants, steel mills such as Armco Steel in Ashland, and manufacturing complexes such as General Electric Appliance Park in Louisville.
Products manufactured by and reportedly present at Coleman Station may have included:
- Thermo-12® calcium silicate block insulation on high-temperature steam lines and pressure vessels
- Asbestos pipe covering and sectional insulation for steam and hot water piping
- Asbestos block insulation for boilers and steam generators
- Asbestos cloth and tape for joints, fittings, and flanges
- Transite® cement-asbestos board for construction applications
- spray-applied fireproofing® spray-applied fireproofing containing asbestos
Bankruptcy and compensation: filed for bankruptcy in 1982 and established the Personal Injury Settlement Trust**, which has paid billions of dollars to asbestos disease victims. Kentucky residents — including former Coleman Station workers — may be eligible to file claims with this trust. An experienced Kentucky mesothelioma lawyer can evaluate your eligibility and file trust claims alongside any civil litigation.
If you or a loved one worked at Kentucky Utilities’ Coleman Station in Campbellsville and have been diagnosed with mesothelioma, lung cancer, or asbestosis, a Kentucky mesothelioma lawyer can help protect your legal rights. Workers at this coal-fired power plant may have been exposed to asbestos-containing materials during construction, maintenance, and equipment overhauls spanning decades. Manufacturers —, and — reportedly knew of asbestos dangers but allegedly concealed this information from workers. This article covers what happened at Coleman Station, which jobs carried the highest exposure risk, and what legal options you have now.
⚠️ KENTUCKY FILING DEADLINE — CRITICAL WARNING
Kentucky’s statute of limitations for mesothelioma and asbestos disease claims is only ONE YEAR under KRS § 413.140 (personal injury) and KRS § 411.130 (wrongful death)(1)(a) — one of the shortest deadlines in the entire nation.
Families have as little as 12 months after diagnosis to file a civil lawsuit. Once that window closes, your right to compensation through Kentucky courts may be permanently extinguished — regardless of how strong your case is.
The clock starts running from your diagnosis date — not from when you were exposed.
If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, lung cancer, or asbestosis and worked at Coleman Station, contact a Kentucky mesothelioma attorney today. Every day that passes after diagnosis is a day closer to losing your legal rights forever. Filing a claim with an asbestos trust fund does not stop the Kentucky statute of limitations clock.
General Equipment at Kentucky Utilities Coleman Station Campbellsville 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.
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:
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
- 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 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.
Data Sources
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)
- Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection 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.