They were green like the foamy water that ran out of a pipe from the nearby Dry Run Landfill and into the creek from which the Tennant cattle drank. It wasnt just his cattle dying. Something is the matter right there. But friends knew the grandson of one of their neighbors had become an environmental lawyer in Cincinnati. Her son, Bucky, was born in 1981 with nose and eye deformities. A creek connects the landfill and the fields of Tennant's farm. Wilbur Tennant, a cattle farmer in Parkersburg, W.Va., the site of a huge DuPont plant, had over many years gradually built up his herd. Attorney Rob Bilott discusses the Fight Forever Chemicals campaign on Nov. 19, 2019. The primary coordinates for Tennants Farm Pond Dam places it within the WV 26184 ZIP Code delivery area. The company turned this land into the unlined Dry Run Landfill. In November 2019, the Washington Post hosted a podcast with Mark Ruffalo and Robert Bilott to discuss the film and the lawsuit. Attached to it was a gallbladder that didnt. Just because there really is something in the water doesnt mean you cant also be paranoid. Bilott soon discovered that Dry Run Creek, the offshoot of the Ohio River that Tennant's livestock drank from, was full of C8, an industry name for perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA, one of the . Taking on the case of Wilbur Tennant (played by Bill Camp in the film), a West Virginian farmer whose land is contaminated from toxic run-off dumped near his premises by DuPont Company, Bilott (Ruffalo) quickly encounters the gargantuan machine of corporate disinformation, negligence, cover-up, and strong-arm tactics that allow the company to . It is a chemical used in the manufacturing process of Teflon. Tennant and his brother Jim wanted to get to the bottom of it, so they dissected some carcasses. The muscle looked fine, but a thin, yellow liquid gathered in the cavity where it once beat. LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser ID. Home. Wilbur Earl Tennant was a cattle farmer in Parkersburg, Virginia, who was known to his family and friends as Earl. GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. In his research, Bilott had come across a DuPont letter that referred to a chemical known as . Bilott created a timeline that showed what DuPont and 3M knew about the chemicals. That calf had died miserable. Tennants Farm Pond Dam, Wood County, West Virginia. The film seems to imply that the fire might have been an arson attempt that hit the wrong house, though it doesnt suggest who might have lit it. He sued DuPont again on behalf of thousands of people who lived near the Teflon plant and for decades had been exposed to PFOA through drinking water and air pollution. Wilbur Tennant. How would you like for your livestock to have to drink something like that? he asked his imagined audience. Somebodys not doing their duty, he said to the camera, to anyone who would listen. He suspected one of his town's largest employers was up to no good, allegedly dumping chemicals and contaminating his farm's water supply, and the result was hundreds of sickened and dead cattle. Bilott tries to communicate to Tennant that he "isn't that kind of environmental lawyer," yet Tennant's exasperated resilience strikes a chord with the compassionate . 'Dark Waters' is slated to release on November 22, 2019, and has Mark Ruffalo playing the role of a tenacious attorney, who takes the fight to a big chemical company. After contacting the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, he felt stonewalled. Thats the largest gall I ever saw in my life! One person can't always cause a change, but one person can set off a chain of reactions to cause change. Lawyers in Parkersburg, West Virginia, turned him down when he urged them to sue DuPont, then one of areas biggest employers. He had formerly worked for the Wood County Schools as a bus. The farmhouse stood at the foot of a sloping meadow that rose into a bald knob. The stream looked like many other streams that flowed through his sprawling farm. Bilott later determined it was one of the forever chemicals perfluorooctanoic acid, commonly referred to today as PFOA. He was certain that DuPont was fouling the waters that his cattle drank, and he'd already lost more than half of his herd to bizarre illnesses. Anne Hathaway as Sarah Bilott and the real-life Sarah Bilott. Location of conflict: Little Hocking, City of Belpre, Tuppers Plains, Village of Pomeroy, Lubeck Public Service District, and Mason County Public Service District: . This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. I could find no record of any such incident taking place. A load balancing cookie set to ensure requests by a client are sent to the same origin server. Shorty after that, DuPont started to medically monitor female workers at the Washington Works plant to, as the company's medical director noted, "answer a single question does C8 cause abnormal children?" In less than two years he had lost at least one hundred calves and more than fifty cows. But you just give me time. And it takes immense courage and conviction to do that. Dry Run was less than a miles walk from the home place, across Lee Creek, through an open field, and along a pair of tire tracks. The smell was odd. The problem, he thought, was not what they were eating but what they were drinking. But his first big meeting is interrupted by Wilbur Tennant (Bill Camp, outstanding), a cattle farmer from Parkersburg, W.Va., the rural town where Bilott's grandmother lives and where he used to . DuPont also discovered that pollution containing PFOA vented from the Washington Works plant affected the surrounding area, allegedly contaminating the local water supply, according to the New York Times Magazine. I dont recall him drinking, Deitzler says. He was speaking to the camcorder pressed to his eye. His earlier efforts had all revealed unpleasant surprises: tumors, abnormal organs, unnatural smells. From playing with computers to building networks: How the space for Black Software was made. Robert Bilott isn't done. And after Bilott watched and listened, he took action. They concluded that 'the study was valid' and that 'the observed fetal eye defects were due to C8,' according to internal DuPont documents. In 1998, a farmer named Wilbur Earl Tennant knocked on the door of a lawyer named Robert Bi-lott on the grounds that the vegetation structure of the land he owned was impaired, the cattle he was breeding were affected and the only responsible was the factory located next to the river, ow-ning a wasteland adjacent to his property. Wilbur's brother, Jim, was also employed as a laborer at the Washington Works plant, along with hundreds more who found steady work at the area's largest employer. Cookie used to remember the user's Disqus login credentials across websites that use Disqus. "Hold on to something," Jim Tennant warned as he fired up his tractor. Dont understand that at all. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. And of course, he knew all about Dry Run Landfill, a DuPont waste site near his farm that largely served the company's chemical plant near Parkersburg. Standing walleyed in an open field was a polled Hereford red with a white face and floppy ears. "He was doing for the Tennants what he would have done for any of his corporate clients pulling permits, studying land deeds and requesting from DuPont all documentation related to Dry Run Landfill but he could find no evidence that explained what was happening to the cattle," the New York Times wrote. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. It's the messy, real story behind Focus Features' Dark Waters movie, starring Mark Ruffalo as Robert Bilott, the corporate lawyer turned environmental activist who led an epic legal fight against chemical titan DuPont. This time he is seeking to force 3M and DuPont to pay for medical monitoring of every American exposed to PFAS. The use of these cookies is strictly limited to measuring the site's audience. Thank you for helping us continue making science fun for everyone. During the years before DuPont settled the lawsuit paying the Tennants an undisclosed amount without assigning blame for the dead cows the company sent Bilott boxes of documents he requested through the normal court process. oh, two-thirds bigger than it should be., The kidneys, too, looked abnormal. Bilott's grandmother had lived close by, and as a child he had spent a summer on a neighbouring farm, where family members recalled that Bilott had grown up to become an environmental lawyer, and put his name forward to the Tennants. He was 7 years old. . Other testing by 3M found the compounds in apples, bread, green beans and ground beef. The Tennants had sold some of their property to DuPont years earlier. Dark Waters tells the true story of American farmer Wilbur Tennant who calls on lawyer Rob Bilott (Mark Ruffalo) to help him sue a chemical company Credit: Focus Features. Over the decades they steadily acquired land and cattle, until 200 cows roamed more than 600 hilly acres. It was to be incinerated or sent to chemical-waste facilities. Maps, Driving Directions & Local Area Information Dry Run used to flow gin clear. It was really his dedication to bringing that out that really inspired me to try to find a way to address the bigger problem., Amazingly, the Pakula-esque paranoid thriller scene, in which Wilbur Tennant spots a low-level helicopter hovering ominously over his property, uses the scope of his hunting rifle to better examine the vehicle, and scares it off in the process, did in fact occur. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The story started in Parkersburg, West Virginia, home to about 32,000 people and about a three-hour drive due east of Cincinnati. The West Virginia-based . He couldnt quite place it. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. In 1998, cattle farmer Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, West Virginia, contacted Bilott and claimed that his livestock was dying because the runoff from a DuPont landfill had contaminated a creek on . Sue Bailey was pregnant when she worked in the Teflon division of the plant. Both companies denied any wrongdoing. He wasnt an expert, but the disease seemed clear enough that he bagged the physical evidence and left it in his freezer for the day he could get someone with credentials interested enough to take a look. We'll assume you're okay with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. He had stopped feeding his family venison from the deer he shot on his land. It is based on a shocking true story, where a series . The goal of the merger was to combine two businesses that dabbled in . That's just some of the video footage Wilbur showed lawyer Robert Bilott, according to an excerpt from Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer's Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont. Washington, West Virginia. Her white hide was crusted with diarrhea, and her hip bones tented her hide. As a boy, he had cooled his bare feet in this creek. Where they should have been smooth, they looked ropy, covered with ridges. This cookie is used to manage the interaction with the online bots. When the Grahams heard in 1998 that Wilbur Tennant was looking for legal help, they remembered Bilott, White's grandson, who had grown up to become an environmental . Wamsley suffered from ulcerative colitis, a condition that can lead to rectal cancer, which, in his case it, did. Wilbur Tennant shot this video in the late 1990s on his property in West Virginia. And the man who started it all, Wilbur Tennant, won't see that resolution. Its something I have never run into before., He reached back into the cow and pulled out a liver that looked about right. Her calf, black and white, lay dead on its side in a circle of matted grass. PFOA and PFOS are among more than 9,000 versions of synthetic chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS. And if it sounds familiar, it should. Their quest for justice wound its way through the American judicial system for nearly two decades, unearthing long-hidden deeds which, some reports say, are akin to those perpetrated by big tobacco on the public. For decades it had been the backbone of 3Ms Scotchgard brand of stain-resistant products. The symptoms shown in the movieincluding such discolorations as blackened teethare also similar to the ones that Tennant really did videotape before sending the tapes to Bilott. Dark Waters'messed up true story reveals an emerging public health and environmental threat, the pervasiveness of "forever chemicals," and an alleged corporate cover-up. wilbur tennant farm location . Bryan Schutmaat for The New York Times. Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, sold DuPont a 66-acre tract of land that became part of the Dry Run Landfill. Dark Waters tells a story that in many ways is still being written, and itwill likely take years for this latest lawsuit to be resolved. According to the New York Times Magazine, "By 1990, DuPont had dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA sludge into Dry Run Landfill. Forever chemicals found in drinking water throughout Illinois: Search the database >>>. Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyers Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont. Twitter sets this cookie to integrate and share features for social media and also store information about how the user uses the website, for tracking and targeting. Bubbles formed as it tumbled over stones in a sudsy film. He had carried a rifle as he went about the farm, always ready to shoot dinner. At fifty-four, Earl was an imposing figure, six feet tall, lean and oxshouldered, with sandpaper hands and a permanent squint. riding horses, milking cows and watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown on TV. DuPont's scientists understood that the landfill drained into the Tennants' remaining property, and they tested the water in Dry Run Creek. apples, bread, green beans and ground beef. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. izuku has a rare quirk fanfiction; novello olive oil trader joe's; micah mcfadden parents; qatar airways 787 9 business class; mary holland married; spontaneous novel ending explained Now it was filled with specimens you might find in a pathology lab. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. The Post read a statement from DuPont that reiterated the company's commitment to health and safety and protecting the environment: "Although DuPont does not make the chemicals in question, we have announced a series of commitments around our limited use of PFAS and are leading [the] industry in supporting federal legislation and science-based regulatory efforts to address these chemicals." They had seven cows then. Sometimes it ran so dry hed find them glittering dead in the mud. DuPont immediately removed all female workers from areas where they might come into contact with the chemical.". The farmer's name was Wilbur Earl Tennant. Bilott helped companies comply with new environmental regulations established by the Superfund legislation and became an expert at the chemistry of pollutants, according to the New York Times Magazine. It was contaminated with high levels of PFOA. Born: March 6, 1942 . Photos by Focus Features and EPK. Company officials told one of Tennants brothers in person and in writing they planned to turn it into a landfill for office garbage nothing hazardous. These cookies do not allow the tracking of navigation on other websites and the data collected is not combined or shared with third parties. No one would help him. Earl had come to believe that its water was now poisonedwith what, he did not know. The saga began for Bilott when Wilbur Tennant, a cattle farmer from Parkersburg, West Virginia, called Bilott a few months before he made partner at a white-shoe Cincinnati law firm. Per the article, "In March 1981, DuPont sent a pathologist and a birth defects expert to review the 3M data Bailey had read about in the locker room. The same year, the EPA fined DuPont more than $10 million for "failing to report 'substantial risk of injury to human health' from C8 (PFOA)," according to The Intercept. In 1973 she [took] him to the cattle farm belonging to the Tennants' neighbors, the Grahams, with whom White was friendly. Bilott, whose story was chronicled in an engrossing and detailed 2016 New York Times story by Nathaniel Rich, goes from a 1999 lawsuit on behalf of Tennant to a 2001 class action involving several . Bilott found studies that potentially linked PFOA with a variety of cancers, birth defects, and illnesses. Its head was tipped back at an awkward angle. Wilbur Tennant is on Facebook. She had a calf over there. Rob Bilott's Exposure is a real-life whodunit, a page-turning courtroom drama, a David-and-Goliath story of one man against an industrial colossus and a shocking expos of America's utterly broken environmental policy.You should also take this book personally - because the "exposure" of the title is yours. A farmer's cows suddenly start dying off. . This cookie, set by Cloudflare, is used to support Cloudflare Bot Management. Sure, bitters make cocktails taste great. It was different from the regular dead-cow smells he had dealt with all his life. And in 2017, according to Reuters, DuPont and its spinoff, Chemours, agreed to pay more than $600 million to settle about 3,500 personal injury resulting from the alleged contamination of local water supplies in Parkersburg. Seventy years later these chemicals are in our soil, our air, in wildlife. He died of cancer in 2009. 1: The Farm. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. Calf born dead. Earl loved his cows, and the cows loved Earl. Yes, the household name used as a cookware coating agent that is advertised to make food not stick and is known for its durability in . Bilott's connection to Parkersburg dated back to his childhood, when he spent summers there visiting his grandmother, and her friend is the one who suggested to Wilbur Tennant that he call Bilott, an environmental lawyer at Cincinnati firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister, for help. Around here, that economic engine was DuPont, known for innovations like nylon, Tyvek, and Teflon. Wilbur Tennant and his family had recently sold part of their farmland to a company and had no idea what would end up coming of it. Similarly, Bilotts boss, Tom Terp (Tim Robbins), is not on the record as ever having threatened to cut Bilotts balls off and feed them to DuPont himself if his subordinate were to ever again unilaterally send internal documents found via discovery to a federal regulatory agency or speak on his findings to Congress. Over the course of that lawsuit, Bilott discovered that DuPont had been using a chemical called PFOA in the production of Teflon for decades, while quietly studying its effects on lab animals and factory workers. NID cookie, set by Google, is used for advertising purposes; to limit the number of times the user sees an ad, to mute unwanted ads, and to measure the effectiveness of ads. Alternatives for PFOA and PFOS promoted as safe by industry are just as dangerous, if not more so, scientists are finding. Given the fact that the events depicted on the Tennant cattle farm in Parkersburg, West Virginia, are Dark Waters' most important evidence, the filmmakers should have treated them with the utmost authenticity - to their credit, they did for the most part.Wilbur Tennant's brother Jim really was a DuPont employee who got sick with a disease the doctors couldn't diagnose; and the chemical . In October 2018, he filed a lawsuit on behalf of a firefighter, who used fire suppression foam and equipment containing PFAS for 40 years. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. just a dukes mix of everything. Until lately, the cattle always fattened up nicely on that, plus the corn he grew to finish them and a grain mix he bought from the feed store. This cookie is associated with Django web development platform for python. We lurched down a rutted dirt road past the old clapboard farmhouse where he grew up. Google DoubleClick IDE cookies are used to store information about how the user uses the website to present them with relevant ads and according to the user profile. Even though he sold them to be finished and slaughtered for beef, he didnt have the heart to kill one himself, unless it had a broken leg and he needed to end its suffering. Anyone could see that something was terribly wrong, not only with the landfill itself but with the agencies responsible for monitoring it. He especially enjoyed hunting, working in the garden and around the farm with his grandson Josh and . These emerging contaminants linger, breaking down only when incinerated at very high temperatures. Birds sang through the white-hot humidity as he panned the camcorder across the creek. Bilott is back in court again. DuPont and 3M kept the U.S. EPA in the dark for years, company and government records show. They just turn their back and walk on, he told the camera. When their attorney, Robert Bilott of Cincinnati, asked the EPA to order DuPont to stop using C8, the company sought a restraining . Robert Bilott is a partner at Taft, Stettinius & Hollister LLP in Cincinnati, Ohio. Nor was it on the list of substances regulated by the EPA. He believed that the DuPont chemical company, which until recently operated a site in Parkersburg that is more than 35 times the size of the Pentagon, was . When the Grahams heard in 1998 that Wilbur Tennant was looking for legal help, they remembered Bilott, White's grandson, who had grown up to become an environmental lawyer. PFOA is part of a larger class of PFAS chemicals.