The Tennants were initially reluctant, especially because of its intended use, but DuPont promised it would house only nonhazardous waste, like scrap metal and ash, according to the Huffington Post. The calf was engulfed in a black, humming mist. We'll assume you're okay with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. Issued by Microsoft's ASP.NET Application, this cookie stores session data during a user's website visit. People who didn't know him very well called him Wilbur, but friends and family called him Earl. wilbur tennant farm location. DuPont immediately removed all female workers from areas where they might come into contact with the chemical.". Alternatives for PFOA and PFOS promoted as safe by industry are just as dangerous, if not more so, scientists are finding. And it takes immense courage and conviction to do that. Bilott has spent more than twenty years litigating hazardous dumping of the chemicals perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS). Both companies denied any wrongdoing. Ken Wamsley spent nearly 40 years working at DuPont Washington Works plant, and some of that time, he measured levels of the chemical C8 (PFOA). DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. It turned out 3M also made PFOA and sold it to DuPont, which used the chemical cousin of Scotchgard to keep Teflon from clumping during production. There also are related substances called precursors that transform into PFOA and PFOS in the body or the environment. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". Somebodys not doing their duty, he said to the camera, to anyone who would listen. "I've been dealing with this for . VigLink sets this cookie to show users relevant advertisements and also limit the number of adverts that are shown to them. The pattern element in the name contains the unique identity number of the account or website it relates to. A load balancing cookie set to ensure requests by a client are sent to the same origin server. This cookie is set by Facebook to display advertisements when either on Facebook or on a digital platform powered by Facebook advertising, after visiting the website. When their attorney, Robert Bilott of Cincinnati, asked the EPA to order DuPont to stop using C8, the company sought a restraining . In another field, a grown cow lay dead. The West Virginia-based farmer was convinced a toxic river that ran into his farmland was to blame, since the animals' strange symptoms began when his brother sold some land to a chemical company to use as a landfill site a . His hand shook as he pressed the zoom button, zeroing in on a stagnant pool. A thicker foam gathered in eddies, trembling like egg whites whipped into stiff peaks so high they sometimes blew off on a breeze. When DuPont settled that lawsuit in 2004, the company agreed to finance a study of PFOAs health effects. He had formerly worked for the Wood County Schools as a bus. The cattle farmer stood at the edge of a creek that cut through a sun-dappled hollow. Theres been fifty-six cows thats been burnt just like this.. Attorney Rob Bilott discusses the Fight Forever Chemicals campaign on Nov. 19, 2019. 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. At the end of the movie, I had a revelation. His earlier efforts had all revealed unpleasant surprises: tumors, abnormal organs, unnatural smells. 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. In Minnesota, 3M paid an $850 million settlement after the states attorney general used the industry documents in a lawsuit demanding clean drinking water for communities near one of its manufacturing plants outside Minneapolis. riding horses, milking cows and watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown on TV. Something was killing cattle on his West Virginia farm, but no one wanted to help him prove that frothy, green-colored water coming from a neighboring property . Attorney Rob Bilott discusses the Fight Forever Chemicals campaign on Nov. 19, 2019. In the 1980s, Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, got an offer from DuPont. The Taft offices are in Cincinnati, Ohio. Listen to an interview with Bilott about the chemical lawsuits on Science Friday. A creek connects the landfill and the fields of Tennant's farm. Nearly 70,000 people participated. When she returned to work at DuPont, Bailey learned about a study by 3M (the manufacturer of C8) that found similar deformities in unborn rats exposed to the chemical, according to the Huffington Post. For example, New Hampshire sued 3M and DuPont, along with a handful of companies that make firefighting foam containing PFAS. 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. When the cattle on Wilbur Earl Tennants farm began to mysteriously fall ill and die, he suspected it wasnt what the animals were eatingit was what they were drinking. DuPont established a presence along the Ohio River in 1948 with the Washington Works plant near Parkersburg. Around here, that economic engine was DuPont, known for innovations like nylon, Tyvek, and Teflon. The June 23, 2000, letter listed something in the landfill that didnt appear in the other documents or in Tafts chemical dictionaries. R ob Bilott, a corporate lawyer-turned-environmental crusader, doesn't much care if he's made enemies over the years. But what about the alarming moment when a fire breaks out at the home of Joseph Kigers father, who shares his name? Created by Bluecadet. He was speaking to the camcorder pressed to his eye. As one of Bilotts colleagues told the New York Times, To say that Rob Bilott is understated is an understatement. Its also true that Bilott did not have the same Ivy League pedigree of many of his colleagues at Taft, having been raised on Air Force bases across the continental United States and West Germany, and it was through these working-class connections that he was introduced to the Tennant family farm case. The story started in Parkersburg, West Virginia, home to about 32,000 people and about a three-hour drive due east of Cincinnati. There is about a teacup or so full of itits a real dark yeller. It wasnt just his cattle dying. (Chicago Tribune Handout). Parkersburg is also home to the Tennant family, who, for nearly a century, have worked land that eventually grew to 700-plus acres and raised more than 200 head of cattle. Thats why they called it Dry Run. He died of a heart attack in 2009 at age 67. The goal of the merger was to combine two businesses that dabbled in . It flowed through a corner of the three-hundred-acre farm, in a place Earl called the holler. A small valley cut between hillsides, the holler was where he moved the herd to graze throughout the summer. Thank you for helping us continue making science fun for everyone. Did they think he would just sit by? DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Wilbur Tennant is on Facebook. 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. "Though PFOA was not classified by the government as a hazardous substance, 3M sent DuPont recommendations on how to dispose of it. Tennant is convinced that a landfill operated by the DuPont company upstream from his farm is the cause of the continuing maladies suffered by his cattle and his family. Ill do something about it.. How accurately does Dark Waters depict the twists and turns of this maze? Neither Tennant nor Bilott would accept this as the end of the case. That day had never come, so he decided he would make them watch a video. A variation of the _gat cookie set by Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to allow website owners to track visitor behaviour and measure site performance. Used by Yahoo to provide ads, content or analytics. 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 . The Tennants had sold some of their property to DuPont years earlier. In 1981 , 3M found that ingestion of . 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. wilbur tennant farm location . The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". Wilbur Earl Tennant was a cattle farmer in Parkersburg, Virginia, who was known to his family and friends as Earl. wilbur tennant farm location. We consulted a variety of sources, including Nathaniel Richs 2016 New York Times Magazine feature The Lawyer Who Became DuPonts Worst Nightmare (upon which the movie is based), Bilotts own book, other longform articles, and attorney Harry Deitzler (the personal-injury lawyer played in the movie by Bill Pullman), to help sort out whats true and whats embellished. Bilott found studies that potentially linked PFOA with a variety of cancers, birth defects, and illnesses. 1998: Wilbur Tennant contacts Taft's and Hollisters' (Taft) lawyer, Robert Billot, to assist in his case against DuPont for dumping chemical waste into the river that his cows drink from, causing them severe health problems. Hunting had been one of Earls greatest pleasures. As a linchpin bolstering Dark Waters case as a message movie, the events depicted on the Tennant cattle farm in Parkersburg, West Virginia, really ought to be accurate, and for the most part, they are. Next door to Tennant's farm was a landfill owned by E.I. Of Bilotts Famous Letter to the EPA, Terp told the Times that he didnt recall if there was any particular reaction internally and that the partners at Taft were proud of the work that he has done.. A few years after the sale, Tennant suspected DuPont had filled the landfill with more than just garbage. Did they think no one would notice? In a statement to Time, DuPont said it does not produce PFAS but does use them and defended the company's environmental and safety record, noting it has "announced a series of commitments around our limited use of PFAS, including the [sic] eliminating the use of all PFAS-based firefighting foams from our facilities." It smelled rotten. It also helps in fraud preventions. June 14, 2022. According to the New York Times Magazine, "By 1990, DuPont had dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA sludge into Dry Run Landfill. 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. Wilbur Earl Tennant. All Public Member Trees results for Wilbur Tennant. New York, NY 10004. A videotape Tennant shot with a VHS camcorder shows emaciated cows with tumors on their hides. 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 . So, the couple sold about 60 acres to DuPont. DuPont later paid more than $750 million to settle lawsuits filed by Teflon plant neighbors with PFOA-linked diseases, including testicular and kidney cancer, high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease and pregnancy-induced hypertension. The following is an excerpt of Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyers Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont by Robert Bilott and Tom Shroder. These emerging contaminants linger, breaking down only when incinerated at very high temperatures. It was contaminated with high levels of PFOA. People who didnt know him very well called him Wilbur, but friends and family called him Earl. Revelations by another chemical company gave Bilott leverage to go back into court and request more records from DuPont. "If we can't get where we need to go to protect people through our regulatory channels, through our legislative process, then unfortunately what we have left is our legal process," Bilott told Time in November 2019. These cookies help provide anonymized information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. He started the legal process in 1999 against DuPont by filing motions compelling it to turn over documents pertaining to hazardous materials used at the Washington Works plant near Parkersburg. ''Rob's letter lifted the curtain on a . Even though the Tennant case had already settled, Bilott pushed on, building a larger case against DuPont on behalf of residents in a Parkersburg-area water district. Wilbur Tennant explained that he and his four siblings had run the cattle farm since their father abandoned them as children. The sometimes contentious tenor of Bilotts relationship with Wilbur Tennant is also true to life. A corporate courtroom drama typically doesn't need extensive visual effects, but "Dark Waters" had a few key moments that could not be created practically. These included a polluted river . 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 . 3M and DuPont have argued in court and in public statements that neither chemical is harmful to people at typical levels of exposure. Dont understand that at all. Mr. Tennant believed early on that something coming out of the plant and landfill was poisoning the water and the animals on his farm. A downstate Illinois native, Hawthorne joined the Tribune in 2004 after covering the environment and state government in Ohio, Illinois and Florida. YSC cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages. He was an excellent marksman, and his family had always had enough meat to eat. I dont recall him drinking, Deitzler says. PFAS are ubiquitous. . But you just give me time. The farmers name was Wilbur Earl Tennant. Its just like that other calf up yonder, he said, panning over the matted grass. And, based on Centers for Disease Control data, PFAS chemicals were found the blood of 98 percent of people studied. The suit alleges negligence claiming the chemicals contaminated the state's natural resources, according to New Hampshire Public Radio. In April 2000, after 3M conducted tests and studies on a similar, sister chemical to C8 (PFOA) called PFOS, the company notified the Environmental Protection Agency it found that "even modest exposure could have devastating health effects" and started to phase out PFOS use, as well as PFOA, according to the Huffington Post. She had spent the summer in the hollow, drinking out of Dry Run until shed started to act strangely. Forever chemicals found in drinking water throughout Illinois: Search the database >>>. As he does in the film, the real Bilott did begin to experience strange symptoms in 2010 similar to the strokelike transient ischemic attack seen in the movie. Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better experience for the visitors. The document, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, called on global scientists, manufacturers, and retailers to work together to limit the use of PFASs and develop safer alternatives. DuPont and the family settled the lawsuit soon after Bilott shared that information with one of the companys lawyers, who had referred to PFOA in an email as the material 3M sells us that we poop into the river and into drinking water.. Class Action - Part 1. Its dumping pits were unlined, designed for the disposal of nonhazardous wasteoffice paper and everyday trash. Earl had come to believe that its water was now poisonedwith what, he did not know. After this sale, Tennant's cattle started to become sick and Tennant began to understand that . PFOA is part of a larger class of PFAS chemicals. I could find no record of any such incident taking place. Isnt that lovely?. 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. "The innards was bright green.". But now it seemed they were ignoring him. He didnt believe it anymore. DuPont's scientists understood that the landfill drained into the Tennants' remaining property, and they tested the water in Dry Run Creek. November 25, 2019 12:03 PM EST. The carcasses lay where they fell. are linked to DuPont's landfilling of PFOA. This cookie is used to detect and defend when a client attempt to replay a cookie.This cookie manages the interaction with online bots and takes the appropriate actions. Photo illustration by Slate. These cookies do not allow the tracking of navigation on other websites and the data collected is not combined or shared with third parties. Bilott had now discovered the cause in the deaths of the cattle on Tennant's farm and had called DuPont regarding this information. 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 . This is the hundred and seventh calf thats met this problem right here. He focuses on the froth-covered creek before the tape cuts to a dissected calf with blackened teeth and oddly colored organs. With Sue Bailey, Bucky Bailey, Ken Wamsley, Wilbur Tennant. On August 31st of 2017, E. I. Dupont de Nemours Company and the Dow Chemical Company merged as part of a $130 billion merger. He panned the camera a few degrees. In the flames, a calf lay broadside, burning. This cookie is installed by Google Universal Analytics to restrain request rate and thus limit the collection of data on high traffic sites. On the other side of his property line, Dry Run Landfill was filling up the little valley that had once belonged to his family. This cookie is used to manage the interaction with the online bots. The farm would have stretched even longer if one of Wilbur Tennant's brothers, Jim, did not sell 66 acres to the DuPont company in the early 1980's for a landfill they were going to create for their factory. Did they think no one would notice? He zoomed out and panned over to an industrial pipe spewing froth into the creek. (He later would be played by actor Mark Ruffalo in the 2019 film Dark Waters.). In March, a federal judge limited the case to Ohio residents with a specific amount of the chemicals in their blood, which alone could include up to 11 million people. July 7, 1996 Washington, West Virginia. . 'Dark Waters' is an upcoming American legal thriller helmed by Todd Haynes. This cookie is set by the provider Akamai Bot Manager. . The chemical companies are appealing the decision. Ill do something about it.. Nothing jumped out in page after page he reviewed, Bilott recalled. Some states aren't waiting for the feds to act, taking steps to hasten a response to "forever chemicals" through mitigation and regulation, and some of those steps include court action. On the other line was Wilbur Tennant (played by Bill Camp), a cattle farmer from Parkersburg, W.V. His cattle were dying inexplicably, and in droves. The Teflon Toxin, Part 2: Wilbur Tennant vs. DuPont. And the money came in handy, too, since Jim, a Washington Works employee, had for years suffered from flu-like symptoms and illnesses that baffled doctors, as outlined in a Delaware Online article from 2016. DuPont initially refused, but a court order ultimately forced them to turn over what amounted to more than 100,000 pages, some dating back 50 years. This cookie, set by Cloudflare, is used to support Cloudflare Bot Management. By the 1980s, DuPont had allegedly begun dumping PFOA waste into the Dry Creek Landfill, near the Tennant property. Late in the film, a disillusioned Bilott (Mark Ruffalo), up against a wall, imagines that the multinational corporation, the likes of which he once defended, might be setting him up to be a cautionary tale for all their would-be litigants: Look, everybody, even he cant crack the maze, Bilott says, and hes helped build it.. Over the decades they steadily acquired land and cattle, until 200 cows roamed more than 600 hilly acres. PFOA (C8) and PFOS were the long-chain, more commonly used substances in a larger group of more than 4,000 man-made chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). These chemicals are most harmful when ingested and consequently bioaccumulate, meaning they build up over time in the body (just as they build up in the environment). I dont understand them great big dark red places across there. LinkedIn sets this cookie to remember a user's language setting. This cookie is native to PHP applications. By that point, 153 animals died had died grisly deaths on his property . The pipe flowed out of a collection pond at the low end of a landfill. Whatever had killed this cow appeared to Earl to have eaten her from the inside out. Still, in other scenes, such as when Bilott falsely suspects his car might be rigged with an explosive, its made clear that the events of the film are leading some of its characters to fear things that arent really there. How would you like for your livestock to have to drink something like that? he asked his imagined audience. 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. May 15, 2009; Location: Washington, West Virginia; Tribute & Message From The Family. But friends knew the grandson of one of their neighbors had become an environmental lawyer in Cincinnati. Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer's Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont. The edge in his voice was anger. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Published by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. He toldThe Intercept in 2015 that it bubbled up out of glass containers and "was everywhere." DuPont appeared to be concerned enough about PFOA that the company tested employees at the Teflon plant and found the chemical in their blood, the letter to the EPA revealed. You could poke it with a stick and leave a hole. Photos by Focus Features and Mike Coppola/Getty Images. A key component of Teflon was C8, also known as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). The olive green water had a greenish brown foam encrusting the grassy bank. That looks a little bit like cancer to me.. Wilbur Tennant shot this video in the late 1990s on his property in West Virginia. Like the movie, Richs article portrays Bilott as an unassuming and understated man driven by an innate sense of decency. We lurched down a rutted dirt road past the old clapboard farmhouse where he grew up. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Sue Bailey was pregnant when she worked in the Teflon division of the plant. After the Tennants had been paid and Bilotts law firm collected its fees for representing them, he found himself coming back again and again to the piles of industry documents he had collected, urged on by the persistent Tennant. "If that's what it takes to get people the information they need and to protect people, we're willing to do it.". When he noticed his cows were mysteriously dying, he filmed what was happening on the farm, and the toxic legacy of C8 - DuPont's Teflon chemical - was discovered. She had a calf over there. Other testing by 3M found the compounds in apples, bread, green beans and ground beef. During the course of the litigation, we have confirmed that the chemicals and pollutants released into the environment by DuPont may pose an imminent and substantial threat to health and the environment, Bilott wrote at the beginning of his March 6, 2001, letter. While DuPont did also conduct walk-throughs and physical searches of the Tennants belongings, deeply alienating some of the familys renters, the movie depicts some of Tennants evidence going mysteriously missing. Anne Hathaway as Sarah Bilott and the real-life Sarah Bilott. Robert Bilott is a partner at Taft, Stettinius & Hollister LLP in Cincinnati, Ohio. He walked there every day to count heads and check fences. This cow died about twenty, thirty minutes ago, Earl said. This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. Behind him, white-faced Herefords grazed in rolling meadows. Thunderstorms occasionally swelled the creek so much that he couldnt wade across it. 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 . Earl pulled on white gloves and pried open the cows mouth, probing her gums and teeth. The flies hummed as loud as bees. DuPont settled the Tennant case for an undisclosed amount. Not even buzzards and scavengers would eat them. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. The tongue looked normal, but some of the teeth were coal black, interspersed with the white ones like piano keys. 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. This video contains graphic imagery. Then he wrote a 19-page letter, attached some of the industry documents and mailed the package to officials at the EPA and the Department of Justice. Its something I have never run into before., He reached back into the cow and pulled out a liver that looked about right. Photos by Focus Features and EPK. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. As Bilott details in Exposure, the April 23, 2001, incident was eventually confirmed between his legal team and DuPonts. Deer, birds, fish and other wildlife were turning up dead in and around Dry Run. In the meantime, people are drinking these chemicals every day. Teflon came into prominence in the 1940s, and with it came DuPont's rise as a chemical giant. Up until about a decade ago, few in the public knew about C8, let alone its potential health effects, but DuPont allegedly knew its toxic effects for decades and purportedly failed to tell employees or the public, according to The Intercept. The same year, DuPont found that water in one local district contained PFOA levels at three times that figure. Bilott, with begrudging support of his firm (Tim Robbins plays his boss), confirms Wilbur's worst fears: the local DuPont plant has been dumping toxic waste on land next to the Tennant farm.