Hoot Lake Plant
The original Hoot Lake Plant in Minnesota was a hydroelectric plant built in the early part of the last century. As electrical demand grew and the river levels became less predictable, the company that originally owned and operated the plant (Otter Tail Power Company) built a steam generation plant nearby. This was expanded over the next forty years. Of the three original units, two are still in service, but may be retired when the Big Stone Unit 2 comes online in 2013.
The use of asbestos-containing materials (ACMs) is parallel to the history of the Industrial Age; virtually every type of industry made use of such materials prior to the early 1980s. ACMs were used throughout the construction of Hoot Lake, including the buildings themselves and the machinery. Asbestos is resistant not only to heat and flame, but electrical current as well. Over the years, it saved lives and prevented billions of dollars in property loss.
Asbestos disease is relatively rare, but painful and deadly. The health hazards were well known to the corporations that produced and marketed ACMs as early as the 1930s, but the knowledge was kept from the general public until litigation in the late 1970s forced the issue out into the open. Asbestos illnesses are a serious work-related hazard for power plant workers. This was borne out in a Puerto Rican study in 2003; out of 1100 chest x-rays from such workers, over 130 of them showed signs of asbestos disease.
Today, the EPA and OSHA have issued regulations that require companies such as Golden Valley Electric to provide a safe work environment for their employees. Violations can result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and penalties, and individuals responsible for such violation often face prison time as well.
Conditions such as asbestosis and mesothelioma have lengthy latency periods; symptoms may not appear until several decades after exposure first occurs. Therefore, former employees of Hoot Lake and their families should discuss their history of asbestos exposure with their primary care physicians if possible. Asbestos diseases are usually treatable in their early stages, but invariably fatal in their latter ones. However, mesothelioma chemotherapy is available for some patients from doctors like Dr. David Sugarbaker of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA.
In the first two-thirds of the 20th century, it was commonplace for many industrial facilities to use the mineral asbestos because of its resistance to heat, flame and electrical current. Although the use of asbestos was intended to reduce the risk of injury, it sadly often had the opposite effect: exposure to asbestos in the workplace has resulted in serious illness for thousands of laborers. The reason is that asbestos strands, when inhaled, damage internal organs, leading to life-threatening illnesses including "miner's lung" and cancer of the lungs. In addition, job-related contact with asbestos is a known cause of the almost always fatal cancer called mesothelioma, which affects the cells that line the chest cavity (pleural mesothelioma) or the abdominal cavity (pericardial mesothelioma).
People who work with asbestos now are usually protected from inhalation due to the numerous rules controlling its use, presence at job sites and disposal. However, in the past, laborers without protective equipment commonly toiled in areas where asbestos dust filled the air. Family members were also exposed to asbestos if companies didn't provide workplace-only uniforms, because employees inadvertently transported asbestos dust home on their skin or in their hair.
Men and women who were employed at this site during their career, as well as their family members, should find out about these health conditions and tell their healthcare professionals about their history of exposure to asbestos, because the signs of diseases such as mesothelioma are often difficult to distinguish from those of less serious conditions.
Sources
Bowker, Michael. Fatal Deception: The Terrifying True Story of How Asbestos is Killing America. New York: Touchstone, 2003.
Cabrera-Santiago, Manuel et al. "Prevalence of Asbestos-Related Disease Among Electrical Power Generation Workers in Puerto Rico." Presentation at American Public Health Association Annual Meeting, 2007.
Wikimapia. “Hoot Lake Plant (Fergus Falls, MN).”
http://wikimapia.org/5552352/Hoot-Lake-Plant
