About Lakeside Power Station Springfield Illinois
Lakeside Power Station was a coal-fired steam electric generating station in Springfield, Illinois, owned and operated by the City of Springfield — a municipally owned utility — from approximately 1961 until its closure in 2009. The facility had a capacity of approximately 37.5 megawatts (MW) and operated for 48 years during the peak era of unregulated asbestos use in American industry.
Lakeside was built in 1961, when asbestos use in industrial facilities was completely unregulated. OSHA did not exist until 1970; meaningful asbestos rules came years after that. Coal-fired steam generating stations operate at extreme temperatures and pressures: coal combustion produces steam exceeding 1,000°F; boiler furnaces exceed 2,000°F; and steam systems operate at hundreds of pounds per square inch. A 37.5 MW coal-fired station like Lakeside was a high-density asbestos-containing materials environment. Asbestos fiber — primarily chrysotile, amosite, and crocidolite — dominated thermal insulation from the 1950s through the 1980s and may have been integrated into virtually every major piece of equipment and structural system in the plant.
The documented generating units at Lakeside included seven units constructed between 1936 and 1965, with boiler and steam systems supplied by Springfield Boiler and Babcock & Wilcox, turbines by General Electric and Allis-Chalmers, and generators by General Electric and Allis-Chalmers. The two largest coal-fired units (Units 6 and 7, added in 1961 and 1965 respectively) featured cyclone boilers operating at 850 PSI and 900°F.
General Equipment at Lakeside Power Station Springfield 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.
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:
Who May Have Been Exposed at Lakeside Power Station Springfield Illinois
Workers employed at Lakeside at any point may have encountered asbestos-containing materials. Members of Heat and Frost Insulators Local 1 (St. Louis) and comparable Illinois locals who performed insulation work at regional power plants as contract employees may have handled asbestos-containing pipe covering — typically 3-foot cylindrical lengths, sometimes exceeding 95% asbestos by weight — wrapped in overlapping layers around steam lines and sealed with asbestos-containing finishing cement. Installation, maintenance, and removal of boiler block insulation is among the most thoroughly documented asbestos exposure scenarios in power plant litigation — in both Illinois state court and Missouri asbestos dockets.
Workers who spent years maintaining boilers, insulating pipes, replacing gaskets, and operating heavy equipment may have been exposed to asbestos-containing materials that were routine, invisible, and lethal. No respiratory protection requirements for asbestos exposure existed in industrial settings during most of Lakeside’s operational life, and workers at Lakeside may have been exposed to asbestos-containing materials without any warning of the fatal disease risk that would follow decades later.
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.
Cross-State & Regional Corridor Workers
Springfield sits in central Illinois, but Lakeside’s workforce — and the asbestos-related diseases now striking them — does not respect state lines. The Mississippi River industrial corridor connecting Missouri and Illinois generated a shared labor pool across the region: pipefitters and insulators from St. Louis, boilermakers from the Metro East, and tradesmen who may have worked at Lakeside alongside those who worked at Labadie Energy Center, Portage des Sioux Power Station, and Granite City Steel. Many of Lakeside’s former workers hold Missouri residency or carry Missouri union cards. The same manufacturers whose products may have been present at Lakeside also reportedly supplied virtually every other major facility in the Mississippi River industrial corridor — including Labadie Energy Center (Franklin County, Missouri), Portage des Sioux Power Station (St. Charles County, Missouri), Monsanto Chemical facilities in St. Louis and Sauget, and Granite City Steel in Granite City, Illinois. Workers who moved between these facilities may have carried asbestos fiber on their clothing and tools from job to job, compounding their total exposure burden.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.