the City of Kennett Power Plant

About Kennett Dunklin Missouri

Kennett and the Missouri Bootheel

Kennett is the county seat of Dunklin County in the Missouri Bootheel — a region historically defined by agricultural production, light manufacturing, and municipal utility infrastructure. The City of Kennett Power Plant was a central piece of that infrastructure, operating in proximity to other industrial facilities in the region that also reportedly relied on asbestos-containing materials throughout much of the twentieth century. The Bootheel’s industrial geography connects directly to the broader Mississippi River corridor that Missouri shares with Illinois. Along this corridor, power plants, chemical plants, steel mills, and refineries reportedly relied heavily on asbestos-containing products from the same manufacturers, installed by workers dispatched from the same union locals. Workers dispatched from Heat and Frost Insulators Local 1 (St. Louis), UA Local 562 (St. Louis), or Boilermakers Local 27 (St. Louis) frequently traveled throughout this corridor — working at Missouri facilities such as Labadie and Portage des Sioux and at Illinois facilities such as Granite City Steel. Asbestos exposures allegedly accumulated across that entire work history and can form the basis of claims in both Missouri and Illinois courts.

Coal Steam Generating Station Operations

The Kennett facility was a coal-fired steam electric generating station — the dominant power generation technology throughout the United States from the 1930s through the 1980s. These plants operate on a straightforward thermodynamic cycle:

• Coal burns in massive boilers to generate steam at extreme temperatures and pressures
• High-pressure steam drives turbine-generators to produce electricity
• Spent steam condenses and returns to the boiler in a continuous loop

Every component of this cycle requires extreme thermal insulation to function safely and efficiently. For most of the twentieth century, that insulation was asbestos-based. There was no meaningful substitute until asbestos was finally regulated out of most industrial applications beginning in the 1970s — and even then, replacement was gradual, expensive, and often incomplete.

Construction and Operation Timeline

Municipal power plants like the Kennett facility were typically built between the 1930s and 1960s, then expanded and renovated through the 1980s and beyond. This timeline matters for exposure claims because:

• Multiple generations of workers may have encountered asbestos-containing materials at this single facility
• Different asbestos products were installed during different construction and renovation periods
• Deteriorating older ACMs posed ongoing hazards to maintenance workers performing repairs long after initial installation
• Workers in later decades encountered both original ACMs and replacement materials, many of which also reportedly contained asbestos

The same timeline applied throughout the Mississippi River industrial corridor. Workers who helped build or maintain the Kennett facility may also have worked contemporaneous projects at Labadie, Portage des Sioux, or facilities in Madison County and St. Clair County, Illinois — all locations where asbestos-containing materials from the same manufacturers were allegedly in widespread use. > ⚠️ Time Is Running Out: The longer you wait after a diagnosis to contact a Missouri asbestos attorney, the harder it becomes to locate co-workers who can corroborate your exposure, recover union dispatch records, and identify the manufacturers whose asbestos-containing products you may have encountered. Missouri’s 5-year statute of limitations under Mo. Rev. Stat. § 516.120 runs from your diagnosis date — not from when you were exposed. And with **Call a Missouri mesothelioma attorney today. —