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IBEW Local Union 1701

From WikiMesothelioma — Mesothelioma Knowledge Base
IBEW Local Union 1701
Owensboro, Kentucky — western Kentucky electrical workers
Parent International International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), AFL-CIO
IBEW district Fourth District
Chartered 1 April 1951
Hall 2911 West Parrish Avenue, Owensboro, KY 42301
Hall telephone Office 270-684-3058; job line 270-688-0777
Membership 598 reported at 30 June 2025 (306 A members, 170 BA members, 122 nonvoting retirees)
Construction jurisdiction Nine western Kentucky counties: Daviess, Hancock, Henderson, Hopkins, McLean, Muhlenberg, Ohio, Union, Webster
Work represented Inside construction wiremen, technicians, apprentices; utility generation, transmission and line work
OLMS file number 017-149

Executive Summary

IBEW Local Union 1701 is an Owensboro-based local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, chartered 1 April 1951 and representing electrical workers across nine western Kentucky counties — Daviess, Hancock, Henderson, Hopkins, McLean, Muhlenberg, Ohio, Union and Webster.[1][2] Its hall is at 2911 West Parrish Avenue in Owensboro, in an office building the local completed in 1981.[3][1] The local's most recent federal financial filing reports 598 members at 30 June 2025.[4]

Local 1701 sits in the IBEW's Fourth District. This page states that explicitly because it is a point on which secondary sources go wrong: the Sixth District covers Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and does not include Kentucky.[5]

Two structural features of this local shape the work histories its members carry, and both matter for asbestos purposes. The first is that Local 1701 has a dual identity. It is an inside-construction local with a hiring hall, an out-of-work register and a five-year apprenticeship — and it is also the bargaining representative for utility generation, transmission and line workers at Big Rivers Electric and, since a 2023 election, at Kenergy Corp.[2][6][7] A construction wireman dispatched from the hall and a station electrician on a utility payroll are both Local 1701, and they worked in materially different places. The second is dispatch breadth. A member referred out of one hall across nine counties and a multi-employer contractors' association may have worked for a dozen signatory employers across a career, which multiplies the sites where exposure could have occurred and makes a work history correspondingly harder to reconstruct decades later.[2]

A word about what this page does and does not establish. Western Kentucky's industrial corridor contains documented asbestos: coal-fired generating stations whose demolition scopes name thermal-system insulation and asbestos abatement, a municipal utility whose decommissioning documents identify asbestos-containing pipe and vessel insulation, and heavy industry across the same counties.[8][9] Local 1701's jurisdiction covers those counties. Neither of those facts, alone or together, establishes that any particular member was exposed to asbestos at any particular site. Site presence, union jurisdiction and asbestos presence are three separate propositions, and this page keeps them separate throughout — including in the tables and summaries, where compression is what usually collapses them.

No documented Local 1701 member has been identified with mesothelioma. A review of roughly 250 names on the local's In Memoriam roll, together with obituary checks, found none.[1] That is a finding, and it is stated here rather than left to silence. Likewise, no study follows a Local 1701 population. The one piece of IBEW-specific epidemiology below, Robinson 1999, is a proportionate-mortality analysis of death certificates for 31,068 IBEW construction members nationally — not a followed cohort, and not a study of this local or this region.

Local 1701 did not manufacture, sell, or specify asbestos-containing products. Liability for asbestos disease rests with the manufacturers who made and sold asbestos insulation, electrical components, gaskets and board while knowing the health risks — many of which have since entered bankruptcy and funded trusts that pay claims today — and, in appropriate cases, with premises owners.[10][11] A Local 1701 member or family pursuing compensation is not suing the union.

At-a-Glance

IBEW Local Union 1701 at a glance:

  • Chartered 1 April 1951, with a charter that a 2025 IBEW account says International President Daniel W. Tracy signed over 26 member names[1][12]
  • Nine western Kentucky counties of construction jurisdiction, as specified in the signed inside agreement — Daviess, Hancock, Henderson, Hopkins, McLean, Muhlenberg, Ohio, Union and Webster[2]
  • Fourth District, not the Sixth — a correction worth making explicitly, because the Sixth District covers five Great Lakes states and not Kentucky[5]
  • 598 members at 30 June 2025, up from 537 in FY2023; the five-year range across FY2021–FY2025 is 537 to 598[4][13]
  • First apprenticeship class graduated in 1954, three years after the charter, and the training program still runs — 14 apprentices turned out as journeymen at the end of the 2024–2025 school year[1][12]
  • The local won a one-vote NLRB election at Kenergy Corp. in December 2023, 27 to 26, and was certified as representative — the linemen came in by election, not by voluntary recognition[7]
  • A documented bargaining relationship with Big Rivers Electric covering generation and transmission employees, including at Sebree Station[6][14]
  • Asbestos disease among IBEW construction members is well documented nationally. A NIOSH study of 31,068 U.S. members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers who worked primarily in construction and died 1982-1987 reported a mesothelioma proportionate mortality ratio of 356, meaning mesothelioma made up a markedly larger share of these members' deaths than expected.[15] That is a national figure for the membership, not a rate for this local, not an incidence rate, and not a measure of any individual's risk.
  • Electricians were substantially elevated, but they did not lead the trades. In the same CDC table that puts electricians at PMR 2.8, insulation workers are at 26.9 and electricians rank tenth among the elevated occupations[16]

Key Facts

Measure Finding (Source)
Full name International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union 1701[1]
Charter date 1 April 1951[1]
Hall 2911 West Parrish Avenue, Owensboro, KY 42301[3]
IBEW district Fourth District[5]
Membership (FY2025) 598 — 306 A members, 170 BA members, 122 nonvoting retirees. These are IBEW membership categories, not a journeyman-versus-apprentice headcount[4]
OLMS file number 017-149, filing Form LM-2[17]
Bargaining counterpart (construction) Owensboro Division, Southern Indiana Chapter, NECA — inside agreement effective 1 July 2023, stated expiration 31 May 2026, with year-to-year continuation language[2]
Journeyman wireman wage $38.60 per hour effective 1 June 2025, up from $35.60 at the agreement's start[2]
Apprenticeship Owensboro Electrical JATC, 5651 Old Highway 54, Philpot, KY — five years, 8,000 hours on the job, at least 180 classroom hours per year[18][19]
Kenergy certification NLRB case 25-RC-330312 — petition 17 November 2023, 53 of 53 ballots counted, 27–26, Certification of Representative 26 December 2023[7]
Kentucky filing deadline One year — KRS 413.140(1)(a), "within one (1) year after the cause of action accrued." Wrongful death runs on a different clock[20][21]
Governing OSHA standard 29 CFR 1926.1101 for construction work; general industry falls under 29 CFR 1910.1001[22]
Current permissible exposure limit 0.1 fiber per cubic centimeter as an 8-hour time-weighted average — a limit that did not exist during the peak exposure decades[22]

Who does Local 1701 represent?

Local 1701 represents electrical workers in western Kentucky, and it does so through two quite different structures.

Inside construction. The local's inside agreement with the Owensboro Division of the Southern Indiana Chapter, NECA, covers journeyman wiremen, technicians and apprentices dispatched to commercial and industrial jobsites across the nine-county jurisdiction. The agreement makes the union the exclusive referral source for covered hiring and requires an out-of-work register divided into referral groups; the business manager may appoint job stewards.[2]

Utility work. Separately, Local 1701 has represented generation and transmission bargaining units at Big Rivers Electric Corporation — a Kentucky Public Service Commission filing describes the local in exactly those terms, and Big Rivers' 2020 annual report records a five-year transmission agreement negotiated with the local.[6][23] Since December 2023 it also represents a unit of line and service technicians at Kenergy Corp.[7]

IBEW's 2025 local listing labels Local 1701 `catv, ees, i, o&u`, indicating several represented work types beyond inside construction; the retrieved listing does not define each code, so this page does not gloss them.[12]

Why the construction/utility split matters for a work history

This is the most consequential fact on the page for anyone reconstructing an exposure history, and it is easy to miss because both groups carry the same card.

A construction wireman worked wherever the hall sent him. Over thirty years that could mean a hospital, a school, a paper mill, a smelter, a generating station on a turnaround, and a dozen commercial buildings — each with a different employer of record, each with different other trades working alongside. The paper trail is a dispatch history and a series of contractor payrolls.

A utility electrician worked at a small number of fixed installations for one employer, often for decades. The paper trail is a single personnel file, and the sites are named.

Those two working lives produce very different exposure reconstructions, and they produce different documentary strategies. Two members who worked the same years may reach different conclusions when they investigate a claim. Neither result says anything about the other's account; it reflects a real difference in where the work was done and what records survive.

Documented history

Local 1701 was chartered on 1 April 1951. A 2025 IBEW account describes a charter signed by International President Daniel W. Tracy bearing 26 member names; the local's current Parrish Avenue office was completed in 1981.[1][12] The local marked its 75th anniversary at the Owensboro Convention Center in 2026, an event an IBEW item reported drew 130 attendees.[24]

The first apprenticeship class graduated in 1954, three years after chartering — a class photograph appears on the local's history page.[1] Training has been continuous enough since that the local reported 14 new journeymen at the end of the 2024–2025 school year.[12]

Selected documented milestones:

  • 1998–1999 — Carhartt organizing and a project labor agreement. After what IBEW described as a year of tense relations surrounding a nonunion $23 million Carhartt facility in Hanson, Business Manager Harold Baggett and organizer Gary Osborne helped obtain a project labor agreement under which future sites would be built union.[25]
  • 2002–2003 — Hanson expansion. Local 1701 members worked on Carhartt's $7 million service-center expansion, which IBEW described as 100% union.[26]
  • 2011–2012 — the Owensboro hospital build. A January 2012 Messenger-Inquirer account reported 386 members, with more than 200 Local 1701 electricians working on the new Owensboro Medical Health System hospital during a regional construction boom.[27]
  • 2015 — Sebree Station safety milestone. Local 1701 appeared in a joint labor-management safety story marking two million hours without a lost-time incident at Sebree.[14]
  • 2023 — the Kenergy election. See below; this is the best-documented recent event in the local's history.
  • 2024–2025 — Kenergy organizing recognized. IBEW's September 2025 Local Lines credits organizers Andy Daniel and Ryan Hayden with organizing 50 Kenergy linemen over roughly 18 months.[12]

What the record does not support. No reliable evidence was found tying Local 1701 to the original construction of specific Owensboro-area power stations, aluminum smelters, paper mills, chemical plants, Texas Gas facilities, or the Owensboro GE plant. No merger history and no documented Local 1701 strike were located. Those claims should not be made without project records, contractor payrolls, dispatch books or member testimony.

The Kenergy election, and a correction to the record

Earlier research files on this local recorded that no NLRB case naming Local 1701 could be found. That is wrong, and the reason it was wrong is worth stating: NLRB case search matches the case caption, so matters in which the local is the charging or petitioning party surface under the employer's name. It was a search-method artifact, not an absence. Nine cases are documented.

The headline case is a win. In case 25-RC-330312, Local 1701 filed a representation petition on 17 November 2023 covering a unit of construction-and-maintenance crew leaders, line technicians, apprentice line technicians, service technicians and substation crew leaders at Kenergy Corp. All 53 eligible voters cast ballots and all 53 were counted. The local won 27 to 26, and the Board issued a Certification of Representative on 26 December 2023.[7] That settles a question the earlier files left open: the Kenergy linemen came in by election, not by voluntary recognition, and they came in by one vote.

First-contract bargaining was contested. In case 25-CA-337546, filed 8 March 2024 under Section 8(a)(1) and 8(a)(5), the Board's regional office issued a complaint and notice of hearing on 22 July 2025, with the docket active through 5 December 2025.[28] A separate charge, 25-CA-342912, was withdrawn on 30 May 2025. Earlier Big Rivers matters include 25-CA-261708 (2020, withdrawn) and 25-CA-212125 (2017, deferred under Collyer and then dismissed in 2019).

Two older Board decisions involving the same employer remain citable precedent: Big Rivers Electric Corp., 260 NLRB 329 (1982) and 266 NLRB 380 (1983), the latter frequently cited on the statutory-supervisor status of power-system dispatchers.

Why OMU employees fall outside the Board's jurisdiction

Owensboro Municipal Utilities is a municipal utility of the City of Owensboro. Section 2(2) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 152(2), excludes "any State or political subdivision thereof" from the definition of "employer".[29] OMU employees are therefore outside the Board's jurisdiction, which is why OMU employees generate no representation or unfair-labor-practice cases as OMU employees. That is a limit on who can be an employer-respondent before the Board. It is not a claim that no Board case anywhere names OMU — a municipal facility can appear in a matter brought against a signatory contractor working there, and that is a separate question a search would have to answer on its own evidence. What the statute explains is the absence of an OMU bargaining unit in Board records, and that absence has a statutory reason rather than being evidence of anything about the local.

This matters for how OMU appears on this page. OMU is jurisdiction and construction-work context, never an IBEW-represented employer. No collective bargaining agreement, LM filing or news account tying OMU employees to Local 1701 was found. (The statutory application of § 2(2) to OMU specifically is an inference from the statute; no Board ruling addressing OMU was located.)

Territory, structure and leadership

The construction jurisdiction is nine western Kentucky counties, named in the signed inside agreement: Daviess, Hancock, Henderson, Hopkins, McLean, Muhlenberg, Ohio, Union and Webster.[2] Neighbouring and regional locals include Louisville Local 369, Evansville Local 16 and Paducah Local 816.[30]

Leadership — read the federal filing, not the website. The local's own site carries stale officer information. The FY2025 LM-2 is the best current documentary source. It identifies Jonathan T. Nugent as president, Timothy G. Therber as vice president, Caelum Gaynor as treasurer, Ryan M. Hayden as financial secretary and business manager, and Darren Stanley as Executive Board chair; Andrew S. "Andy" Daniel appears as assistant business manager and organizer.[4][1] Peggy Brown is secretary/bookkeeper and office manager — not a business manager; publishing a dual-business-manager structure would be inaccurate on the present record. One technical caution for anyone reading the filing directly: the raw LM-2 schedule reverses the first- and last-name fields, so a literal read of that schedule will produce wrong names.

Leadership should still be confirmed with the hall before it is relied on. Officer terms turn over, and a filing is a snapshot of the fiscal year it covers.

Membership and finances

Local 1701 files Form LM-2 under OLMS file number 017-149. Membership across the five most recent public filings ranges from 537 to 598.[17]

Fiscal year ended 30 June Members Total receipts Total disbursements Net assets
2021[31] 583 $572,487 $669,487 $805,369
2022[32] 551 $631,442 $680,602 $758,596
2023[13] 537 $797,586 $703,634 $856,330
2024[33] 575 $956,684 $834,359 $984,737
2025[4] 598 $1,029,355 $1,023,105 $985,492

Across FY2021 to FY2025, reported receipts rose 79.8%, membership rose 2.6%, and reported net assets rose 22.4%.

Apprenticeship and the OEJATC

The Owensboro Electrical Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee operates at 5651 Old Highway 54, Philpot, Kentucky, with Jason Sharp identified as training director. The published program requires five years, 8,000 hours of on-the-job training, and at least 180 classroom hours per year, generally in two three-hour evening sessions each week.[18][19] The committee also maintains a ten-year training partnership with Owensboro Community & Technical College.[34]

The agreement's apprentice wage steps are 43%, 47%, 55%, 60%, 65% and 75% of the journeyman rate, with a standard ratio of two apprentices to every three journeymen.[2]

The wage and fringe package

The most recent public inside agreement lists a journeyman wireman base wage of $38.60 per hour effective 1 June 2025, following $35.60 at the agreement's start and $37.28 from June 2024.[2]

Adding the agreement's own stated contribution rates to that base wage produces an estimated employer package of approximately $59.08 per hour: NEBF at 3% ($1.158), health and welfare ($8.350), local pension at 23% ($8.878), JATC at 2.8% ($1.081), administrative maintenance ($0.120), LMCC at 0.3% ($0.116) and HRA at 2% ($0.772).[2] That total is arithmetic performed from the agreement's terms, not a figure printed on an official wage sheet. It excludes the one-cent national LMCC contribution and any trustee-approved health-rate change made after the agreement was printed. No public successor or post-May-2026 allocation sheet was located.

Benefit structure: the National Electrical Benefit Fund is employer-funded at 3% of gross labor payroll; the Local 1701 pension plan (EIN 61-0459923, Plan 001) takes 23% of gross wages; health and welfare runs through the NECA-IBEW Welfare Trust Fund.[35][36][37] One precision point: the inside agreement funds the local pension, not NEAP, so National Electrical Annuity Plan coverage should not be assumed for inside wiremen absent another applicable agreement.[38]

How were electricians exposed to asbestos?

Electricians were rarely the trade that installed asbestos thermal insulation. They were, on a great many pre-1980s jobsites, the trade working in and around the systems that other trades had insulated — and, distinctly, the trade handling electrical equipment that contained asbestos in its own right.

Both pathways are documented:

  • Asbestos inside electrical equipment. Arc chutes, molded electrical components, panel and switchgear insulation, gaskets, asbestos-cement and transite board, heat-resistant cloth and wire insulation. A simulation study of two functional 1970s-era industrial crane control panels reported that their original arc chutes "contained approximately 36% chrysotile," while measuring low airborne concentrations during the simulated operation and maintenance it examined. All three of its authors list Exponent, Inc. affiliations, and that affiliation travels with the result.[39]
  • Dust from adjacent work. Pipe, boiler, turbine, duct and vessel insulation disturbed by electricians pulling wire through occupied spaces, or by other trades working nearby. NIOSH investigated a General Electric facility after two deceased electricians were found to have asbestosis and reported historical exposure around asbestos insulation; one sampled material contained 20–25% chrysotile.[40]

CDC's own framing of the bystander pathway is worth quoting exactly, because it names this trade: workers in other occupations, "e.g., carpenters, electricians, pipefitters, plumbers, welders", might also have been exposed "if they were present on-site during spraying activities."[16]

Risk depended on product, condition, task, ventilation, controls, era and nearby work — not on job title alone. OSHA's construction asbestos standard sets an eight-hour permissible exposure limit of 0.1 fiber per cubic centimeter and imposes controls for regulated work, but those controls are modern and should not be projected backward onto mid-century jobs.[22]

What does the research show?

No figure below is a Local 1701 rate. Robinson 1999 is IBEW-specific but is a proportionate-mortality analysis rather than a followed cohort; the remaining figures describe electricians as an occupational category, studied elsewhere. None is a Kentucky rate or a measure of any individual's risk.

The strongest finding, and the one to lead with. A NIOSH analysis of 31,068 IBEW members who worked primarily in the construction industry and died 1982-1987 reported a mesothelioma proportionate mortality ratio of 356, alongside asbestosis at 247 and lung cancer at 117.[15] A proportionate mortality ratio compares the share of deaths from a cause against the share expected; it is not an incidence rate, not an individual's risk, and not proof of causation.

The national mortality picture — with the honest comparison attached. CDC's 2017 analysis of 1,830 malignant mesothelioma decedents reports, in its occupation column, electricians: 53 deaths, PMR 2.8 (95% CI 2.1–3.7). The same table's industry column gives electric power generation, transmission and distribution: 24 deaths, PMR 2.2 (1.4–3.3) — directly on point for station work.[16]

That same table is where the honest framing comes from. Insulation workers sit at PMR 26.9 (16.2–42.0), and electricians rank tenth among the elevated occupations listed. Electricians were substantially elevated. They did not lead the trades, and a page implying otherwise would be checkably wrong.

Two figures on duration — and they are not interchangeable. A large British case-control study reports two separate odds ratios for the grouped category "plumber, electrician, painter or decorator", and the stratum has to travel with the number:

Stratum Odds ratio (95% CI) Lifetime risk
≥5 years in the trade, any age 14.6 (8.8–24.4) not reported for this stratum
≥10 years before age 30 17.1 (10.3–28.3) 2.0%

Both are real, and they answer different questions. The 2.0% lifetime risk belongs only to the ≥10-years-before-30 stratum, and the study states it for this occupational group specifically. The often-quoted "1 in 17", or 5.9%, is the carpenters figure from the same table and must never be attached to electricians. For household context, the same study puts baseline lifetime risk at approximately 1 in 1,000 and finds it approximately doubled in exposed workers' relatives (combined OR 2.0, 95% CI 1.3–3.2).[41] That figure carries two conditions and both are load-bearing. The paper's own sentence: "The ORs for domestic exposure before 30 years of age in Table 6 (2.1 for men, 1.9 for women; combined OR 2.0, 95% CI 1.3–3.2) are based on cases with no occupational exposure." So it describes domestic exposure before age 30 in people with no occupational exposure of their own. The separate adjusted regression across all cases (2.3 in women, 1.1 in men) is a different analysis and must not be presented as a refinement of the 2.0.

A shipyard cohort. A 1985 mortality study of welders and other craftsmen at a north-east England shipyard, covering over 1,000 welders and electricians employed between 1940 and 1968 and followed to 1982, observed 13 deaths from mesothelial tumours, nine of them among the electricians — with electricians classified by the study as the trade most exposed to asbestos.[42] Two limits belong with that finding. It covers four trades at one yard, not shipyard work generally. And it is reported here as stated in the abstract: PMC exposes no OCR'd body text for this pre-digital article, so trade-level mortality ratios could not be checked.

A second shipyard cohort. A mortality study of 4,702 civilian workers at a U.S. Coast Guard shipyard, employed between 1950 and 1964 and followed to 2001, found mesothelioma mortality elevated among all men employed there: SMR 5.07 (95% CI 1.85 to 11.03).[43] That is a shipyard-wide figure, not an electrician figure. The paper also reports results by job group, but those sit in full-text tables that could not be checked for this page, so no electrician-specific ratio is given here.

A litigation-linked view, disclosed as such. A 2014 review concedes elevated electrician risk and attributes it largely to amphibole exposure during renovation and demolition near insulation trades. Its authors were employed by Gradient, and the paper discloses that "some of the initial research described in this manuscript was funded in conjunction with litigation matters in which one of the authors (Julie E. Goodman) served as an expert witness"; that disclosure travels with the citation wherever it appears.[44]

Two circulating figures this page deliberately does not carry. A standardised mortality ratio for electricians that appears widely in secondary asbestos material could not be located in the text of the paper most often credited with it, and the same digits have attached themselves to at least two unrelated papers and two different occupations while mutating from one disease label to another. A number that migrates like that is not a citation error to be re-checked on each appearance. Separately, a frequently repeated multiplier claiming electricians face a specific fold-increase in risk traces to no verifiable primary source. Neither is reproduced here, in either direction — printing an unsupported figure in order to disown it is how such a figure acquires its next host.

The exposure environment across the jurisdiction

This section describes what is documented about sites, tier by tier, and states for each tier what it does and does not establish about Local 1701 work. The tiers are about evidence quality, not about risk.

Tier 1 — documented asbestos, documented Local 1701 bargaining relationship

Big Rivers Electric generation system — Sebree, Reid, Green, Coleman, and Station Two. This is the strongest combination on the page, and it is still two propositions rather than one.

On the union side: a Kentucky Public Service Commission filing describes Local 1701 as representing Big Rivers' bargaining-unit generation and transmission employees, and the Kentucky Labor Cabinet's 2015 account of a Sebree Station safety milestone states that Local 1701 represented the employees there.[6][14]

On the asbestos side: the demolition scope at HMP&L Station Two expressly covered "insulation removal, asbestos abatement and demolition" under a $1.05 million environmental contract.[9] Coleman Station was built in 1969–71 and Reid and Green in 1966 and 1979–81; the later demolitions of Reid and Green in 2023–24 proceeded under comparable abatement scopes.

What this tier establishes: that Local 1701 represented workers at Big Rivers facilities, and that asbestos was documented at Big Rivers facilities. What it does not establish: that any individual member worked at a given station in a given year, or was exposed. That remains a question for an individual work history — and it is the highest-value lane to investigate.

A June 2022 hydrogen-sulfide double fatality at Green Station, which drew an OSHA inspection and 13 serious violations, appears here as safety history only. It was not an asbestos incident and is not evidence of one.

Tier 2 — documented asbestos, jurisdiction only, no member record

OMU Elmer Smith Station, Owensboro (demolished alongside Plant A, a separate water-treatment facility). OMU's decommissioning and demolition documents identify asbestos-containing thermal-system, pipe and vessel insulation; contemporaneous reporting described heavy insulation in Units 1 and 2, with friable material removed and non-friable material remaining during planning.[8][45][46]

This is a strong asbestos site inside Local 1701's geography, and there is no documented Local 1701 assignment to it. OMU is a municipal utility outside NLRB jurisdiction and is not an IBEW-represented employer. Construction work at a municipal facility can be performed by signatory contractors — that is a general feature of construction, not a record of anything — so an individual's connection to this site has to come from that individual's own dispatch and payroll history, not from this page.

Site What is documented Status
National Southwire / Century Aluminum, Hawesville EPA documents a 475-acre smelter site and its ownership history. The Superfund listing addresses cyanide, fluoride and PCBs — it is not asbestos evidence[47] Inside the jurisdiction; no Local 1701 work record found
Domtar / former Willamette mill, Hawesville Domtar confirms the mill and site identity. A plaintiff-firm account alleges asbestos in historical mill systems; no primary abatement file was located[48] Plausible industrial lead; secondary asbestos evidence only
Texas Gas Transmission, Owensboro Federal records confirm a corporate presence in Owensboro. No asbestos record and no Local 1701 record located[49] Do not characterize as a known exposure site
GE plant, Owensboro A law-firm page asserts GE-related Kentucky exposure; no authoritative Owensboro-specific asbestos record was located Unverified lead only

Two conflations to avoid, both of which appear in circulation. Anaconda's Kentucky smelter was at Sebree, not Hawesville; the Hawesville chain runs National Southwire (1969) to Century Aluminum (2001). And no Kaiser entity appears in the Hawesville ownership chain — a Hawesville smelter worker cannot claim against a Kaiser trust on the strength of having worked there.

What compensation is available to Local 1701 members?

Three avenues exist, and they run on different rules, different evidence and different clocks. This is orientation, not legal advice.

1. Asbestos bankruptcy trusts. These arise from federal Bankruptcy Code § 524(g); each trust applies its own Trust Distribution Procedures and exposure criteria, and there is no separate "Kentucky asbestos trust" programme.[10] Trusts differ in a way that matters here: some maintain approved site lists, and some are product-identification trusts that require proof of exposure to a named product rather than presence at a named site. The Manville trust is the latter — its own instructions require a claimant to "demonstrate a minimum exposure to an asbestos-containing Manville product prior to December 31, 1982."[50]

Several trusts do carry site listings covering western Kentucky generating stations, but the coverage is uneven and no single trust lists every plant Local 1701 members worked. The Owens Corning/Fibreboard trust's OC subfund list carries Big Rivers Electric's Sebree Station and Henderson Station II, Henderson Municipal Power and Light Stations 1 and 2, and four separate Elmer Smith entries, three of them under the Owensboro Municipal Utilities name; its Fibreboard subfund — the Kaylo-relevant list — carries, of these plants, only "Big River Power" at Sebree.[51][52] The Babcock & Wilcox list carries Sebree Station, Henderson Station II and four Owensboro Municipal Utilities power plant entries, none carrying the Elmer Smith name.[53] Combustion Engineering keeps two lists that diverge: its Approved Products Site List carries none of these plants, while its Approved Land-Based list carries "City of Henderson - Municipal Power & Light" and Owensboro Municipal Utilities' Elmer Smith Station.[54] Appearing on a trust site list is not the same as an individual having worked there, and it is not the same as that trust paying a claim; the site list is one element of a claim, not the claim. The converse holds as well: absence from an approved site list creates no presumption that a product was not present, and does not bar a claim supported by other exposure evidence.

2. Tort claims against product manufacturers. The defendants are the companies that made and sold the asbestos-containing insulation, electrical components, gaskets and board. For electricians this is often the more natural route, because the identified products travel with the trade rather than with the site.

3. Premises claims against site owners. A contractor electrician who was not the site owner's employee may have a claim against the owner of the premises where he worked. For a direct employee, workers' compensation exclusivity under KRS 342.690(1) generally bars a tort claim against his own employer — which is precisely why the construction/utility distinction earlier on this page has consequences. A construction wireman dispatched to a station and a utility electrician on that station's payroll are in different legal positions with respect to the same building.

Kentucky's deadlines — the shortest in the country, and they are not one clock

KRS 413.140(1)(a) requires a personal-injury action to be brought "within one (1) year after the cause of action accrued."[20]

Wrongful death runs on a different clock, and the difference is easy to get wrong. The period runs one year from death, not from diagnosis, and KRS 413.180 extends it to one year from the personal representative's qualification, capped at two years from death.[21][55] In 1992 Kentucky's Supreme Court expressly reserved whether the discovery rule applies to wrongful death, so it should not be stated that it does. Never tell a family whose relative has died that they have "one year from diagnosis" — that is the wrong clock for their claim.

Kentucky has no asbestos or latent-disease tolling statute. That is a documented negative against the full current KRS Chapter 413; latent-disease accrual in Kentucky is entirely judicial, resting on Carroll, 37 S.W.3d 699 (Ky. 2000).[56]

The "one-disease rule" is not settled Kentucky law. The often-cited Hedden decision is an unpublished federal order, and its bar rests on claim-splitting after an actual prior lawsuit — not after a prior diagnosis. The Kentucky Supreme Court has never decided the two-action scenario; Carroll expressly reserved it. The framework is Capital Holding (Ky. 1994) as glossed by Combs (Ky. Ct. App. 2006).[57] This page states it as unsettled, because it is.

Separately, Kentucky workers' compensation law generally requires an occupational-disease claim within three years after last injurious exposure or distinct manifestation, whichever is later, with a 20-year outer limit from last injurious exposure for asbestos-related disease. Application is fact-specific.[58]

Take-home exposure: Kentucky's controlling decision is an electrical-component case

In a consolidated opinion rendered 19 March 2026, marked "TO BE PUBLISHED" and written by Justice Keller, the Supreme Court of Kentucky addressed take-home asbestos exposure in dockets 2023-SC-0436-DG (Schneider Electric USA, Inc., f/k/a Square D) and 2023-SC-0440-DG (Union Carbide Corporation). The decision became final on 9 April 2026.[59]

The holding is deliberately narrow, and the Court's own words are the safest statement of it:

"We do not recognize a universal “take-home asbestos” duty, nor do we impose a duty to the general public. The duty which could be found here is confined to individuals alleged to have experienced regular and repeated domestic contact with asbestos-contaminated work clothing over an extended period of time, such that injury from the defendant’s conduct or products was reasonably foreseeable. Casual, incidental, or transitory contact falls outside the scope of this duty."
— Schneider Electric USA, Inc. v. Williams, No. 2023-SC-0436-DG, slip op. at 18–19 (Ky. Mar. 19, 2026)

[59]

The Court also held that workers' compensation exclusivity under KRS 342.690(1) does not bar such a claim.

Two cautions. The opinion does not overrule or abrogate Martin v. Cincinnati Gas & Electric — footnote 4 distinguishes it as "misplaced as nonbinding," on "an entirely different record." Writing that Williams "superseded" Martin states an inference as a fact. And this page names no trial-court county, because the available sources disagree and none traces to the slip opinion.

The connection worth drawing is this: the defendants include Union Carbide phenolic moulding compound supplied to Square D's Lexington, Kentucky plant — Square D being an asbestos electrical-component brand. Kentucky's controlling take-home decision is, at its root, an electrical-component case.

Documenting a Local 1701 work history

For a member or family, the highest-value records are:

  1. Local 1701 records — membership card, classification, initiation date, dispatch history, and pension or health contribution records. For a construction member, the dispatch history is the spine of the whole reconstruction.
  2. Employer records — payroll, Social Security earnings statements, W-2s, contractor records.
  3. Facility records — Big Rivers, OMU, Kenergy, NECA-contractor and facility maintenance or project files.
  4. Testimony — coworkers and family, on tasks, dust, work clothing and laundering, and what other trades were working nearby.
  5. Product identification — switchgear, breakers, arc chutes, panels, cable, gaskets, transite, and the boiler and turbine insulation installed by others.
  6. Regulatory files — abatement surveys, NESHAP notices, demolition specifications, industrial-hygiene records, and the medical chronology.

Kentucky regulates asbestos professionals, abatement entities, commercial demolition and renovation, and waste handling through its state programme and 401 KAR Chapter 58; those files are a records source as well as a regulatory framework.[60]

Gaps and cautions

Stated plainly, because a reader deserves to know the shape of what is missing:

  • Local 1701's current bylaws, meeting schedule, dispatcher list, complete signatory-contractor roster and post-May-2026 wage sheet are not public. They should be requested from the hall rather than inferred.
  • The local's website carries stale officer information. The FY2025 LM-2 governs on this page, and even that should be confirmed with the hall.
  • The $59.08 hourly package is reconstructed arithmetic, not an official total.
  • No Local 1701 role has been verified at Century Aluminum, Domtar, National Southwire, Texas Gas, GE Owensboro, or any specific OMU project.
  • No merger history, no strike record and no comprehensive organizing chronology were located.
  • No documented Local 1701 member has been identified with mesothelioma, across roughly 250 In Memoriam names and obituary checks.
  • No followed cohort of IBEW members exists. The one IBEW-specific study on this page, Robinson 1999, is a proportionate-mortality analysis of death certificates; the remaining figures come from studies of other populations.
  • Site presence, union jurisdiction and asbestos presence remain three different propositions. Nothing on this page should be read as an assertion that any individual was exposed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Local 1701 responsible for its members' asbestos exposure?

No. The local did not manufacture, sell or specify asbestos-containing products. Responsibility for asbestos disease rests with the manufacturers who made and sold those products while knowing the risks, and in appropriate cases with the owners of the premises where the work was done. A member or family pursuing compensation is not suing the union.

Does working in Local 1701's jurisdiction mean a member was exposed to asbestos?

No, and this is the most important distinction on the page. Asbestos is documented at a number of sites within the nine-county jurisdiction, and Local 1701 represents workers in those counties. Those are two separate facts. Establishing that a particular person worked at a particular site in a particular period requires that person's own dispatch history, payroll records and testimony. Neither jurisdiction nor site documentation substitutes for it.

I was an electrician, not an insulator. I never handled asbestos insulation. Do I still have a claim?

Possibly. Two documented pathways do not require having installed insulation: asbestos inside electrical equipment itself — arc chutes, panel and switchgear insulation, gaskets, transite, heat-resistant cloth — and dust from insulation disturbed by others in the same space. CDC names electricians specifically among the trades that "might also have been exposed if they were present on-site during spraying activities." Whether that produces a claim depends on product identification and work history, not on job title.

Were electricians the most exposed trade?

No, and any page suggesting otherwise is checkably wrong. In CDC's national mesothelioma mortality table, insulation workers stand at PMR 26.9 and electricians at 2.8, ranking tenth among the elevated occupations. Electricians were substantially elevated. They were not at the top.

Are these disease rates Local 1701's rates?

No. Robinson 1999 is IBEW-specific, but it is a proportionate-mortality analysis of death certificates for members nationally rather than a followed cohort, and it is not a Local 1701 rate. Every other figure comes from studies of electricians as an occupational category, conducted elsewhere. They describe an occupation nationally; they say nothing about any individual's risk.

I worked construction, dispatched to a dozen employers over thirty years. Is that a problem for a claim?

It is the normal situation for a construction member, and it makes the work history harder to assemble rather than impossible. The dispatch record held by the local is usually the single most useful document, because it can place a member at sites and dates that no single employer's payroll would show.

My father was a Local 1701 member and died years ago. Can the family still recover?

Possibly, but the deadline is different from the one that applies to a living claimant, and it is short. Kentucky wrongful death runs one year from death, extended to one year from the personal representative's qualification and capped at two years from death — not one year from diagnosis. In 1992 Kentucky's Supreme Court expressly reserved whether the discovery rule applies to wrongful death at all. A family in this position should get advice quickly rather than assume a diagnosis-based clock.

Can a Hawesville smelter worker claim against a Kaiser trust?

Not on the strength of having worked at Hawesville. No Kaiser entity appears in the Hawesville ownership chain, which runs from National Southwire in 1969 to Century Aluminum in 2001. Anaconda's Kentucky smelter was at Sebree, not Hawesville. Both conflations circulate and both are wrong.

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 About Us, IBEW Local Union 1701. Includes the local's history page, 1954 first-apprenticeship-class photograph, officer listing and In Memoriam roll.
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 Inside Agreement, IBEW Local 1701 and the Owensboro Division, Southern Indiana Chapter NECA, 1 July 2023 – 31 May 2026.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Contact, IBEW Local Union 1701.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Form LM-2, fiscal year ended 30 June 2025, IBEW Local 1701, OLMS.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Our Districts, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Notice of Filing, Case No. 2013-00413, Kentucky Public Service Commission.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Case 25-RC-330312, Kenergy Corp., National Labor Relations Board. Petition filed 17 November 2023; 53 of 53 ballots counted, 27–26; Certification of Representative issued 26 December 2023.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Request for Proposals 21-01-001-AD, Owensboro Municipal Utilities — decommissioning and demolition scope identifying asbestos-containing thermal-system, pipe and vessel insulation.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Big Rivers implodes former power plant boiler, The Hendersonian — HMP&L Station Two demolition, environmental contract covering insulation removal, asbestos abatement and demolition.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Asbestos Injury Compensation: The Role and Administration of Asbestos Trusts, GAO-11-819, U.S. Government Accountability Office, September 2011.
  11. ↑ Asbestos Bankruptcy Trust Fund Guide, Danziger & De Llano.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 Local Lines, September 2025, The Electrical Worker, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Form LM-2, fiscal year ended 30 June 2023, IBEW Local 1701, OLMS.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 Big Rivers Sebree Station works 2 million hours without a lost-time incident, Kentucky Living, 30 November 2015.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Robinson CF, Petersen M, Palu S. Mortality patterns among electrical workers employed in the U.S. construction industry, 1982-1987. Am J Ind Med. 1999;36(6):630-7. Mesothelioma PMR 356; asbestosis PMR 247; lung cancer PMR 117.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Mazurek JM, Syamlal G, Wood JM, Hendricks SA, Weston A. Malignant Mesothelioma Mortality - United States, 1999-2015. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2017;66(8):214-218. Table 2, occupation column: electricians, 53 deaths, PMR 2.8 (95% CI 2.1–3.7); insulation workers, PMR 26.9 (16.2–42.0). Industry column: electric power generation, transmission and distribution, 24 deaths, PMR 2.2 (1.4–3.3).
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Online Public Disclosure Room, Office of Labor-Management Standards, U.S. Department of Labor. IBEW Local 1701 files Form LM-2 under file number 017-149.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Owensboro Electrical Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Statement of Policy, 11 August 2025, Owensboro Electrical JATC.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 KRS 413.140, Kentucky Revised Statutes — "within one (1) year after the cause of action accrued."
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Conner v. George W. Whitesides Co., 834 S.W.2d 652 (Ky. 1992). Wrongful death accrues at death; the Court expressly reserved whether the discovery rule applies to wrongful death.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 29 CFR 1926.1101 — Asbestos (Construction), Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
  23. ↑ 2020 Annual Report, Big Rivers Electric Corporation.
  24. ↑ The Electrical Worker, Vol. 20 No. 7, June 2026, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers — Local 1701 75th anniversary item.
  25. ↑ Currents, IBEW Journal, March 1999.
  26. ↑ IBEW Journal, June 2003.
  27. ↑ Messenger-Inquirer (Owensboro, KY), January 2012, reporting Local 1701 membership and hospital-project staffing; retrieved via archived newspaper page.
  28. ↑ Case 25-CA-337546, National Labor Relations Board. Charge filed 8 March 2024 under §8(a)(1) and §8(a)(5); complaint and notice of hearing issued 22 July 2025.
  29. ↑ 29 U.S.C. § 152(2), National Labor Relations Act § 2(2), excluding "any State or political subdivision thereof" from the definition of employer.
  30. ↑ Kentucky inside-construction jurisdiction map, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
  31. ↑ Form LM-2, fiscal year ended 30 June 2021, IBEW Local 1701, OLMS.
  32. ↑ Form LM-2, fiscal year ended 30 June 2022, IBEW Local 1701, OLMS.
  33. ↑ Form LM-2, fiscal year ended 30 June 2024, IBEW Local 1701, OLMS.
  34. ↑ "OEJATC–Owensboro Community & Technical College ten-year training partnership," Messenger-Inquirer (Owensboro, KY), November 2025. Recorded in the Local 1701 research file; no public URL was located for the article itself.
  35. ↑ NEBF Contributions, National Electrical Benefit Fund.
  36. ↑ Summary Annual Report 2024, IBEW Local 1701 Pension Plan, EIN 61-0459923, Plan 001.
  37. ↑ Locals We Serve, NECA-IBEW Welfare Trust Fund.
  38. ↑ About the Plan, National Electrical Annuity Plan.
  39. ↑ McCoy MJ, Lewis RC, Mowat FS. Airborne concentrations of chrysotile asbestos during operation of industrial crane controls and maintenance of associated arc chutes. Toxicol Ind Health. 2021;37(3):124-133. Original arc chutes "contained approximately 36% chrysotile"; measured 8-hour time-weighted averages during the simulated scenarios were at or below 0.011 f/cm3. All three authors list Exponent, Inc. affiliations (PubMed record); the conclusion of "very low, if any, exposures" is disclosed here with that context.
  40. ↑ Health Hazard Evaluation, General Electric facility, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Investigation followed asbestosis findings in two deceased electricians; one sampled material contained 20–25% chrysotile.
  41. ↑ Rake C, Gilham C, Hatch J, Darnton A, Hodgson J, Peto J. Occupational, domestic and environmental mesothelioma risks in the British population: a case-control study. Br J Cancer. 2009;100(7):1175-83. Table 2: plumber, electrician, painter or decorator, ≥5 years, OR 14.6 (8.8–24.4). Table 5: ≥10 years before age 30, OR 17.1 (10.3–28.3), lifetime risk 2.0%. The 5.9% lifetime-risk figure in the same table belongs to carpenters.
  42. ↑ Newhouse ML, Oakes D, Woolley AJ. Mortality of welders and other craftsmen at a shipyard in NE England. Br J Ind Med. 1985;42(6):406-10. Cited to the abstract; PMC exposes no OCR'd body text for this article.
  43. ↑ Krstev S, Stewart P, Rusiecki J, Blair A. Mortality among shipyard Coast Guard workers: a retrospective cohort study. Occup Environ Med. 2007;64(10):651-8. Among all men employed: mesothelioma SMR 5.07 (95% CI 1.85 to 11.03) (abstract).
  44. ↑ Goodman JE, Peterson MK, Bailey LA, Kerper LE, Dodge DG. Electricians' chrysotile asbestos exposure from electrical products and risks of mesothelioma and lung cancer. Regul Toxicol Pharmacol. 2014;68(1):8-15. Author affiliation: Gradient. The paper's conflict-of-interest statement: "Some of the initial research described in this manuscript was funded in conjunction with litigation matters in which one of the authors (Julie E. Goodman) served as an expert witness."
  45. ↑ OMU recommends Elmer Smith decommission plan, Owensboro Times, November 2019.
  46. ↑ OMU revises plans, now set to demolish Elmer Smith Station and Plant A, Owensboro Times, January 2022.
  47. ↑ National Southwire Aluminum Co. site record, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Listed contaminants are cyanide, fluoride and PCBs.
  48. ↑ Hawesville Mill, Domtar.
  49. ↑ Texas Gas Transmission Corporation notice, Federal Register, 2 January 1996.
  50. ↑ Statement of Exposure Instructions, Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust, via Claims Resolution Management Corporation. Statement of Exposure instructions require demonstrated exposure to an asbestos-containing Manville product prior to 31 December 1982.
  51. ↑ OC Approved Site List-Updated 5/13/2026, Owens Corning / Fibreboard Asbestos Personal Injury Trust.
  52. ↑ FB Approved Site List-Updated 5/13/2026, Owens Corning / Fibreboard Asbestos Personal Injury Trust.
  53. ↑ B&W Approved Site List-Updated 2/27/2026, Babcock & Wilcox Company Asbestos Personal Injury Settlement Trust.
  54. ↑ Approved Products Site List and Approved Land-Based list, Combustion Engineering 524(g) Asbestos PI Trust.
  55. ↑ KRS 413.180, Kentucky Revised Statutes — personal representative's qualification, two-year outer cap.
  56. ↑ Carroll v. Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp., 37 S.W.3d 699 (Ky. 2000). Latent-disease accrual; expressly reserved the two-action scenario.
  57. ↑ Capital Holding Corp. v. Bailey, 873 S.W.2d 187 (Ky. 1994), as glossed by Combs v. Albert Kahn Associates, 183 S.W.3d 190 (Ky. Ct. App. 2006).
  58. ↑ KRS 342.316 — Liability of employer and previous employers for occupational disease, Kentucky Revised Statutes. Subsection (4)(a): a claim is "forever barred unless a claim is filed with the commissioner within three (3) years after the last injurious exposure to the occupational hazard or after the employee first experiences a distinct manifestation of an occupational disease ... whichever shall last occur"; and "in cases of radiation disease, asbestos-related disease, or a type of cancer specified in KRS 61.315(11)(b), a claim must be filed within twenty (20) years from the last injurious exposure to the occupational hazard."
  59. ↑ 59.0 59.1 Schneider Electric USA, Inc. v. Williams and Union Carbide Corp. v. Williams, Nos. 2023-SC-0436-DG and 2023-SC-0440-DG (Ky. 19 March 2026), TO BE PUBLISHED, opinion by Justice Keller; final 9 April 2026 per the appellate docket. No S.W.3d pagination at time of writing. Court minutes, March 2026.
  60. ↑ Asbestos, Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet; 401 KAR Chapter 58.
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