About Crawford Generating Station Chicago Illinois
54 Years of Coal-Fired Power Generation in Little Village
Crawford Generating Station operated for more than five decades as one of Chicago’s most prominent — and most contested — coal-fired power plants. Located in the predominantly Latino Little Village neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side, the plant began commercial operation in 1958. At peak output, Crawford produced up to 239 megawatts of electricity and employed hundreds of skilled tradespeople, engineers, maintenance workers, and contractors over its lifetime.
Crawford was not an isolated industrial site. It was part of the broader Mississippi River industrial corridor — a network of coal plants, refineries, steel mills, and chemical facilities running from the Chicago metropolitan area south through Joliet, Madison County, and St. Clair County, Illinois, and continuing into Missouri along the Mississippi River through facilities including Labadie Energy Center in Franklin County, Portage des Sioux Generating Station in St. Charles County, and the Monsanto and Granite City Steel complexes. The same union trades, the same asbestos-containing product manufacturers, and the same exposure risks were allegedly present throughout this corridor. Workers frequently moved between facilities in this region, and Missouri-based union members routinely performed contract work at Crawford or at comparable Illinois plants during their careers. If you worked anywhere in this corridor and have been diagnosed with mesothelioma, an experienced asbestos attorney can help reconstruct your full exposure history across multiple sites.
Ownership and Operational History
Crawford changed hands twice during its operational life:
- 1958–1999: Commonwealth Edison Company owned and operated Crawford under a regulated utility monopoly model
- 1999–2007: Following Illinois electricity market deregulation, Commonwealth Edison sold Crawford to Midwest Generation LLC (later restructured as Midwest Generation EME LLC, a subsidiary of Edison Mission Energy)
- 2007–2012: NRG Energy Inc. acquired the facility and continued coal-fired operation until closure
Closure, Decommissioning, and Post-Closure Asbestos Exposure
By the late 2000s, Crawford faced compounding pressures: air quality violations and rising compliance costs under the Clean Air Act and NESHAP regulations, sustained community opposition from Little Village residents, the economic shift toward natural gas, and federal carbon regulations. Crawford shut down in August 2012, ahead of its originally planned closure date.
The facility then entered a decommissioning and demolition process. Under EPA regulations at 40 CFR Part 61, Subpart M — the NESHAP asbestos standard — facilities containing regulated asbestos-containing materials must undergo inspection and abatement before demolition. Demolition and abatement workers at Crawford may have been exposed to asbestos-containing materials during these post-closure activities. Exposure during decommissioning is legally cognizable under Missouri toxic tort law and can support a separate claim even if your primary career at the facility ended years earlier.
General Equipment at Crawford Generating Station Chicago Illinois
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 Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (Illinois EPA) 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 Illinois EPA 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
Illinois law gives mesothelioma and asbestos-disease claimants 2 years from the date of medical diagnosis to file a personal-injury lawsuit (735 ILCS 5/13-202). For wrongful-death claims after an asbestos-related death, the filing window is 2 years from the date of death (740 ILCS 180/2). 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 Illinois 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)
- Illinois Environmental Protection Agency 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.