About Fox Energy Center | Wrightstown

Fox Energy Center is a natural gas-fired combined-cycle power generation facility in Wrightstown, Brown County, Wisconsin, situated on the Fox River in northeastern Wisconsin. Wisconsin Public Service Corporation (WPS) owns and operates the facility. WPS is a subsidiary of Integrys Energy Group and later WEC Energy Group, one of the Midwest’s largest regulated utility holding companies.

Fox Energy Center was constructed and brought online in the early 2000s as part of the national transition toward natural gas combined-cycle technology. The facility includes combustion turbines, heat recovery steam generators (HRSGs), steam turbine systems, and electrical generation and distribution infrastructure. The plant generates hundreds of megawatts of electricity for residential and commercial customers throughout northeastern Wisconsin.

Fox Energy Center was built in the 2000s—decades after asbestos regulation began. Workers at this facility may have been exposed to asbestos-containing materials through several pathways: legacy equipment and components incorporating asbestos-containing products installed during facility construction; maintenance and renovation work with replacement components, including asbestos-containing gaskets, packing, and insulation products that remained available in commercial supply chains well into the 2000s; contractor and subcontractor activity in insulation, pipefitting, boilermaking, and related trades; heat recovery steam generator systems with insulation, gaskets, and pipe components that may have allegedly contained asbestos fibers; and cumulative multi-site exposure as workers logged time at Fox Energy Center and other regional WPS utility facilities.

General Equipment at Fox Energy Center | Wrightstown

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.

No Wisconsin DNR 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:

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 Fox Energy Center | Wrightstown

Workers in the following occupations at Fox Energy Center and comparable power generation facilities may have been exposed to asbestos-containing materials: Heat and Frost Insulators—particularly Local 1—are among the occupational groups with the highest documented cumulative asbestos exposure in American industry. Their work required direct, daily handling of asbestos-containing pipe covering, block insulation, blanket insulation, and finishing cements. Cutting, fitting, and applying these materials generated sustained clouds of respirable asbestos fiber. Workers who performed insulation work at Fox Energy Center during construction or outage maintenance may have been exposed to asbestos-containing materials from multiple manufacturers at this single site.
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 performed outage work, construction, or maintenance at Fox Energy Center were union members from neighboring states—including Heat and Frost Insulators Local 1, UA Local 75, and Boilermakers Local 107, all headquartered in the Milwaukee-area—who traveled the industrial corridor stretching north from Milwaukee through Illinois and Wisconsin along the Mississippi and Fox River valleys. neighboring states workers may have accumulated asbestos exposures at Fox Energy Center in addition to exposures at neighboring states industrial sites, including We Energies’s comparable regional power stations (the region), comparable regional power stations (the region), regional chemical operations (Great Lakes industrial corridor), and regional steel operations (the region). This creates complex, multi-state exposure histories that experienced toxic tort counsel in Milwaukee County Circuit Court and the region handle regularly.
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.