About Lake Shore Plant | Cleveland
A Coal-Fired Power Station on Lake Erie
The Lake Shore Plant is a coal-fired electric generating station on the shore of Lake Erie in Cleveland, Ohio (Cuyahoga County). The facility operated for decades as a primary electricity source for the greater Cleveland metropolitan area and northeastern Ohio.
Ownership and Corporate History:
- Originally constructed and operated by Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company (CEI)
- Became part of Centerior Energy Corporation in the late 1980s
- Merged into FirstEnergy Corp in 1997 (current parent company)
- Operating subsidiary: FirstEnergy Generation Corp
The Mississippi River Industrial Corridor Connection
Workers from Missouri and Illinois have long traveled — and been dispatched through union hiring halls — to facilities across the industrial Midwest, including plants in Ohio. The Mississippi River industrial corridor, anchored by facilities such as Labadie Energy Center (Franklin County, MO), Portage des Sioux Power Plant (St. Charles County, MO), Sioux Energy Center (St. Charles County, MO), and Rush Island Energy Center (Jefferson County, MO), along with comparable plants in the East St. Louis and Granite City belt across the river in Illinois, created a workforce that routinely moved between sites. Members of Heat and Frost Insulators Local 1, UA Local 562, and Boilermakers Local 27 — all based in Ohio — may have worked at Lake Shore during outages, construction projects, or extended maintenance campaigns.
Exposures accumulated at Lake Shore compound asbestos exposure Ohio residents may have already sustained along the Missouri corridor. If you worked at multiple facilities, a Ohio asbestos attorney can explain how that multi-site history strengthens your claim across both litigation and trust fund filings.
Why Power Plants Ran on Asbestos-Containing Materials
Coal-fired power plants consumed asbestos-containing materials at scale for most of the twentieth century — and the same conditions existed at comparable facilities throughout the Missouri-Illinois corridor. The reason was straightforward: asbestos offered properties that engineers of that era could not replicate with anything else.
- Heat resistance sufficient for steam systems running at hundreds of degrees
- Electrical non-conductivity for switchgear and cable insulation
- Tensile strength for composite gasket and packing materials
- Resistance to chemical corrosion in boiler and piping environments
Systems that reportedly incorporated asbestos-containing materials at facilities of this type:
- Coal-fired boilers operating at extreme temperatures and pressures
- High-temperature steam piping insulated to prevent heat loss and contact burns
- Turbines and turbine housings sealed with asbestos-containing products
- Pumps, valves, and flanges fitted with asbestos-containing gaskets and packing
- Electrical systems including switchgear, arc chutes, and cable insulation
- Structural materials: floor tiles, ceiling tiles, fireproofing coatings, and wall insulation
- Boiler rooms and turbine halls built with asbestos-containing insulation board and refractory materials
When these products aged, cracked, were cut during maintenance, or were stripped during renovation, they released fine asbestos fibers into the air that workers breathed directly into their lungs.
General Equipment at Lake Shore Plant | Cleveland
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 Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (Ohio 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 Ohio 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
Ohio law gives mesothelioma and asbestos-disease claimants 2 years from the date of medical diagnosis to file a personal-injury lawsuit (ORC § 2305.10). For wrongful-death claims after an asbestos-related death, the filing window is 2 years from the date of death (ORC § 2125.02). 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 Ohio 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)
- Ohio 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.