About Alma Station | Alma, WI

Alma Station is a coal-fired power plant in Buffalo County, Wisconsin, operated by Dairyland Power Cooperative. The plant has generated electricity since the mid-twentieth century. Like most coal-fired generating facilities built before 1980, Alma Station reportedly relied on thermal insulation, gasket materials, and fireproofing products that may have contained asbestos-containing materials throughout its construction and early decades of operation.

Coal-fired power plants generate extreme heat. Turbines, boilers, steam lines, condensers, and feedwater systems all require thermal insulation capable of withstanding temperatures that destroy ordinary materials. From roughly 1930 through the late 1970s, asbestos-containing materials were the industry standard solution. Asbestos-containing materials were used for pipe and equipment insulation — applied to steam lines, turbine casings, feedwater heaters, and boiler surfaces; gaskets and packing — used at valve joints, pump seals, and flange connections throughout high-pressure systems; refractory and fireproofing materials — sprayed or troweled onto structural steel and boiler room walls; floor tile and adhesives — installed in control rooms, maintenance shops, and administrative areas; and electrical insulation — wrapped around wiring and used in switchgear components.

The facility includes five generating units: Alma 1 and 2 (1947, 20 MW each), Alma 3 (1951, 20 MW), Alma 4 (1957, 55 MW), and Alma 5 (1959, 84 MW), all coal-fired with front-type boilers operating at steam pressures ranging from 850 PSI at 900°F to 1450 PSI at 1000°F.

General Equipment at Alma Station | Alma, WI

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 — Wisconsin

The records below are verified, state-documented asbestos removals at this facility. Each entry represents a regulated abatement project where the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (Wisconsin DNR) 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.

Generating Unit Equipment — Public Registry

The following generating units are documented in the North American Electric Generating Plants database for this facility. This database is maintained by UDI/S&P Global and draws on federal EIA filings and state regulatory records.

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 Alma Station | Alma, WI

Workers who spent time at Alma Station — operators, maintenance crews, pipefitters, boilermakers, insulators, and contractors — may have been exposed to asbestos-containing materials during routine work and during repair or renovation projects.

Insulators cut and shaped pipe insulation daily. Every cut released fiber clouds. Heat and Frost Insulators Local 1 — representing insulation workers throughout the Milwaukee metropolitan area — members were reportedly dispatched to power plant projects throughout the region, including facilities outside Missouri. Boilermakers worked inside boiler systems during outages, surrounded by deteriorating insulation and refractory material. Members of Boilermakers Local 107, based in Milwaukee, have historically been dispatched to regional utility outages. Pipefitters and steamfitters removed old gaskets, scraped joint compound, and replaced packing material — all tasks that allegedly disturbed asbestos-containing materials at close range. UA Local 75 dispatched members to power plant construction and maintenance projects throughout the region. Maintenance mechanics repaired pumps, valves, and turbines. Gasket removal and replacement was routine maintenance work that may have disturbed asbestos-containing materials. Electricians worked in cable trays and switchgear rooms where asbestos-containing electrical insulation was allegedly present. Control room operators worked in buildings where asbestos-containing floor tile, ceiling tile, and wall materials may have been installed. Outside contractors — who often performed the most intensive insulation work — moved between facilities and carried accumulated fiber burden from multiple sites. Bystander exposure was common. Workers in adjacent trades who never personally handled asbestos-containing materials still breathed fibers released by workers who did.

Wisconsin — Filing Deadline & Next Steps

Wisconsin law gives mesothelioma and asbestos-disease claimants 3 years from the date of medical diagnosis to file a personal-injury lawsuit (Wis. Stat. § 893.54). For wrongful-death claims after an asbestos-related death, the filing window is 3 years from the date of death (Wis. Stat. § 893.54). 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 Wisconsin 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 — Wisconsin

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 a claim 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

Many workers who may have been exposed at Alma Station are neighboring states residents who traveled to Wisconsin job sites through union dispatch or contractor assignments, then returned home to communities along the Great Lakes industrial corridor. The same asbestos-containing products reportedly used at Alma Station were reportedly used at facilities throughout the Great Lakes industrial corridor — at We Energies’s comparable regional power stations in Franklin County, at Dairyland’s peer facilities, at We Energies’s comparable regional power stations plant in the region, and at heavy industrial facilities including regional steel operations across the river in the region. Workers dispatched from Wisconsin union halls to Wisconsin job sites carried the same trades knowledge and faced the same fiber hazards they knew from home. Local 1 members who traveled to Wisconsin job sites may have encountered the same asbestos-containing insulation products they allegedly handled at comparable regional power stations. Local 27 members who performed outage work at Alma Station may have been exposed to asbestos-containing materials during those assignments. Members dispatched through Local 562 to Wisconsin utilities may have been exposed to asbestos-containing materials during those assignments. A contractor who worked at Alma Station in Wisconsin may also have worked at comparable regional power stations in Missouri, at comparable regional power stations in Missouri, or at regional steel operations in Illinois. Each of those alleged exposures is legally cognizable and may support separate claims.
Data Sources — Wisconsin

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.