Washington, West Virginia. That things about . These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. 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. 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. In the 1980s, Jim and his wife, Della, would sell acreage to DuPont for use as a landfill for scrap metal, according to the New York Times Magazine. Wilbur Tennant showed Bilott alarming video footage in which his previously docile animals had turned . "As soon as you cut the skin loose, you get some of the foulest smells you've ever smelled," Jim Tennant told the Huffington Post. Used by Yahoo to provide ads, content or analytics. 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. 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. Something is the matter right there. People who didnt know him very well called him Wilbur, but friends and family called him Earl. . He didnt believe it anymore. A videotape Tennant shot with a VHS camcorder shows emaciated cows with tumors on their hides. The other companies named in the lawsuit did not respond to Time's requests for comment. It dont do you any good to go to the DNR about it. . As luck would have it, the company bought 66 acres from one of their employees, Wilbur Tennant. The farmhouse stood at the foot of a sloping meadow that rose into a bald knob. When the cattle on Wilbur Earl Tennant's farm began to mysteriously fall ill and die, he suspected it wasn't what the animals were eatingit was what they were drinking. The Taft offices are in Cincinnati, Ohio. DuPont bought 66 acres of the Tennant's farm land from Wilbur Tennant's brother Jim and his wife Della [1]. 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. That day had never come, so he decided he would make them watch a video. . He panned again: a bonfire on a grassy slope, a pyre of logs as fat as garbage cans. He hardly ever saw minnows swimming in the creek anymore, except the ones that floated belly up. 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. (He later would be played by actor Mark Ruffalo in the 2019 film Dark Waters.). The goal of the merger was to combine two businesses that dabbled in . Revelations by another chemical company gave Bilott leverage to go back into court and request more records from DuPont. All rights reserved. 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. We lurched down a rutted dirt road past the old clapboard farmhouse where he grew up. It dont do you any good to go to the DNR about it. He often walked through the woods shirtless and shoeless, his trousers rolled up, and he moved with an agile strength built by a lifetime of doing things like lifting calves over fences. Photo illustration by Slate. The cattle farmer stood at the edge of a creek that cut through a sun-dappled hollow. "Mysterious wasting disease" and. 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. As a boy, he had cooled his bare feet in this creek. DuPont determined that PFOA passed from pregnant employees to their fetuses. 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. Tennant and his brother Jim wanted to get to the bottom of it, so they dissected some carcasses. 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. And, based on Centers for Disease Control data, PFAS chemicals were found the blood of 98 percent of people studied. Two weeks after he filmed the foamy water, Earl aimed the camcorder at one of his cows. Wilbur Tennant shot this video on his property in the 1990's. Tennant was a farmer who sold part of his land in Parkersburg, West Virginia, to DuPont, for what the company had assured him would be a non-hazardous landfill. It stars Mark Ruffalo as Bilott, along with Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Bill Camp, Victor Garber, Mare . Photo illustration by Slate. Now it was filled with specimens you might find in a pathology lab. 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. Thats very unusual. 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. Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. At fifty-four, Earl was an imposing figure, six feet tall, lean and oxshouldered, with sandpaper hands and a permanent squint. LinkedIn sets this cookie for LinkedIn Ads ID syncing. 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. 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. Bilott found studies that potentially linked PFOA with a variety of cancers, birth defects, and illnesses. 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. He zoomed in. At the end of the movie, I had a revelation. He focuses on the froth-covered creek before the tape cuts to a dissected calf with blackened teeth and oddly colored organs. This cow died about twenty, thirty minutes ago, Earl said. a series of Camcorder videos showing "soapy froth" in a creek running through DuPont's landfill property and into Tennant's farm. A downstate Illinois native, Hawthorne joined the Tribune in 2004 after covering the environment and state government in Ohio, Illinois and Florida. "We have always and will continue to work with those in the scientific, not-for-profit and policy communities who demonstrate a serious and sincere desire to improve our health, our communities, and our planet.". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. He was born at New England, a son of the late Blaine Tennant and Lydia (Wildman) Tennant. This cookie is used for load balancing purposes. Tennant didnt live to witness the scope of what unfolded after he persuaded Bilott to file the lawsuit about his dead cows. Wilbur Tennants brother Jim really was a DuPont employee plagued with a serious ailment his doctors could not diagnose, and the chemical company did buy his 66 acres of the familys 600-some-acre property in the 1980s. It had paid for the 150 acres of land his great-grandfather had bought and for the two-story, four-room farmhouse pieced together from trees felled in the woods, dragged across fields, and raised by hand. Shes poor as a whippoorwill. As in the movie, he at first had a cozy relationship with DuPont, though some of the details of the relationship in the movie are invented. It was to be incinerated or sent to chemical-waste facilities. Wilbur Earl Tennant and his siblings took over the land when their father abandoned them in the 1950s, according to the Huffington Post. Earl had sought help, but no one would step up. The cookie does not store any personally identifiable data. 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.. Did they think he would just sit by? The calf was engulfed in a black, humming mist. Patches of missing hair, discolorations in their . But what about the alarming moment when a fire breaks out at the home of Joseph Kigers father, who shares his name? But two years before 3M announced its phaseout in 2000, the company informed EPA officials for the first time that PFOA and PFOS accumulate in human blood, take years to leave the body and dont break down in the environment. Hard labor was his birthright. 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 . His pleas for help fell on deaf ears, according to the Huffington Post's article, "Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia." Deitzler suggests it would have been a historic first for no partners at a firm of Tafts size and corporate client base to express qualms about a class-action suit of this kind. 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. Hunting had been one of Earls greatest pleasures. Did they think no one would notice? Yes, DuPont is still in business, although it has struggled slightly to survive independently from time to time due to its poor public reputation. In less than two years he had lost at least one hundred calves and more than fifty cows. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". The substance is stable, persistent, and very difficult to break down. I dont ever remember seeing that in there before., He cut out the heart and sliced it open. Wilbur Tennant shot this video on his property between 1995 and 1997. In 1970, a company that purchased 3Ms PFOS-based firefighting foam abruptly halted a demonstration after it killed fish in a nearby stream. 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 . "The innards was bright green.". Thats Hollywood, I guess. (Bilott has not yet responded to my email and telephone inquiries about whether he has ever enjoyed a celebratory Mai Tai or any other tropical, rum-based cocktail.). In his memoir, Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyers Twenty-Year Battle Against DuPont, published earlier this year, Bilott says that doctors could only really diagnose the issue as unusual brain activity after an MRI similar to the one he undergoes in the film. He especially enjoyed hunting, working in the garden and around the farm with his grandson Josh and . Editors note: In 1999, Robert Bilott sued E.I. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. When DuPont settled that lawsuit in 2004, the company agreed to finance a study of PFOAs health effects. His freezer had brimmed with venison, wild turkey, squirrel, and rabbit. But you just give me time. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". After contacting the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, he felt stonewalled. Tennant stated that . PFAS are ubiquitous. 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. 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. A thicker foam gathered in eddies, trembling like egg whites whipped into stiff peaks so high they sometimes blew off on a breeze. Wilbur Tennant passed away on May 15, 2009 at the age of 67 in Washington, West Virginia. The EPA on its own only recently started to take steps to study, monitor, and regulate the use of PFAS and released an update to its action plan programin February 2020. In the flames, a calf lay broadside, burning. 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. Wilbur Tennant. The smell was odd. Initial data showed evidence that it did. Dont understand that at all. The Devil We Know: Directed by Stephanie Soechtig, Jeremy Seifert. But friends knew the grandson of one of their neighbors had become an environmental lawyer in Cincinnati. 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. Among the files, many mentions of the chemical PFOA, also known as C8, a slippery surfactant, that was first produced by DuPont in 1938, appeared. He zoomed out and panned over to an industrial pipe spewing froth into the creek. Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected. People who didn't know him very well called him Wilbur, but friends and family called him Earl. 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. 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. W. Earl Tennant Wilbur Earl Tennant, 67 of New England passed away suddenly at his residence May 15, 2009. . Used to help protect the website against Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks. 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. On paper, Rob Bilott didnt appear to be one of those crusading lawyers in legal thrillers. 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. DuPont's statement said the film "depict[s] wholly imagined events," calling implications of a cover up "inaccurate," and claimed that it "grossly misrepresents" what happened. The suit, rather than seeking compensation, requests that the companies fund independent, scientific studies on the health effects of PFAS, according to Time Magazine. Some of the more surprising moments in the film were in fact real and confirmed by Bilott in his memoir about the case, like when the farmer Wilbur Tennant (Bill Camp), who brought the case to . LinkedIn sets the lidc cookie to facilitate data center selection. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser ID. A load balancing cookie set to ensure requests by a client are sent to the same origin server. LOCATION. By that point, 153 animals died had died grisly deaths on his property . If Wilbur Earl Tennants cows hadnt died from a mysterious wasting disease during the 1990s, the world might have never learned about the secret history of toxic forever chemicals. The farm spread roughly 600 acres, and had a total of 200 cattle roaming around. Where they should have been smooth, they looked ropy, covered with ridges. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Thats why they called it Dry Run. So, the couple sold about 60 acres to DuPont. DuPont's scientists understood that the landfill drained into the Tennants' remaining property, and they tested the water in Dry Run Creek. He was 7 years old. He died of cancer in 2009. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. wilbur tennant farm location. And Im gonna cut her open and find out what caused her to die. Now it looked like dirty dishwater. The cows grazed on a mixed pasture of white Dutch clover, bluegrass, fescue, red clover . "Hold on to something," Jim Tennant warned as he fired up his tractor. Around here, that economic engine was DuPont, known for innovations like nylon, Tyvek, and Teflon. Cookie used to remember the user's Disqus login credentials across websites that use Disqus. But now it seemed they were ignoring him. He died of cancer in 2009; he was 67. However, the company didn't tell employees or regulators and ended the study, the Huffington Post reports. That looks a little bit like cancer to me.. . DuPont established a presence along the Ohio River in 1948 with the Washington Works plant near Parkersburg. Bilott created a timeline that showed what DuPont and 3M knew about the chemicals. Tennant had a problem. Born: March 6, 1942 . 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. Earl retired from the WV Department of Highways as an equipment operator. The US House of Representatives passed a bill in January 2020 that would require the EPA to deem per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) hazardous and establish a national drinking water standard. It all started with Wilbur Tennant's dying cows. 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. The olive green water had a greenish brown foam encrusting the grassy bank. His hand shook as he pressed the zoom button, zeroing in on a stagnant pool. 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. Their innards smelled funny and were sometimes riddled with what looked to him like tumors. (Maddie McGarvey/for the Washington Post) If Wilbur Earl Tennant's cows hadn't died from a mysterious wasting disease during the . As a man, he had walked its banks with his wife. Next door to Tennant's farm was a landfill owned by E.I. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. By the late 1990s, West Virginia farmer Wilbur Tennant was at his wits end. "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. GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. Attorney Rob Bilott discusses the Fight Forever Chemicals campaign on Nov. 19, 2019. 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 a 2019 American legal thriller film directed by Todd Haynes and written by Mario Correa and Matthew Michael Carnahan.The story dramatizes Robert Bilott's case against the chemical manufacturing corporation DuPont after they contaminated a town with unregulated chemicals. I dont understand them great big dark red places across there. The Teflon Toxin, Part 2: Wilbur Tennant vs. DuPontNot Yet Rated. From playing with computers to building networks: How the space for Black Software was made. . In the spring, he would run and catch the calves so his daughters could pet them. C8 and other long-chain per-fluorinated chemicals are used in a myriad of household, industrial, and commercial products. Theres been fifty-six cows thats been burnt just like this.. 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). And if it sounds familiar, it should. For example, the DuPont executive played by Victor Garber, Phil Donnelly, seems to be a composite, and the scene where he turns on Bilott, hissing at him, Fuck you, hick, appears to be invented. The suit alleges negligence claiming the chemicals contaminated the state's natural resources, according to New Hampshire Public Radio. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This cookie is native to PHP applications. YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. There is something wrong with this water, Tennant says on the videotape. Bubbles formed as it tumbled over stones in a sudsy film. The stream looked like many other streams that flowed through his sprawling farm. Robert Bilott isn't done. Thats the water right there, underneath that foam, the farmer said. oh, two-thirds bigger than it should be., The kidneys, too, looked abnormal. When he cut out the other lung, he noted dark purple splotches where they should have been fluffy and pink. 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 . At least thats what his family had been told thirteen years before by the company that had bought their land. Birds sang through the white-hot humidity as he panned the camcorder across the creek. With Sue Bailey, Bucky Bailey, Ken Wamsley, Wilbur Tennant. The C8 Science Study (named for DuPonts internal code for PFOA) found a probable link between the chemical and certain diseases in humans, some of which 3M and DuPont had found in animals years, if not decades, earlier. I fed her at least a gallon of grain a day. Listen to an interview with Bilott about the chemical lawsuits on Science Friday. It smelled rotten. According to the book, DuPont had commissioned a photographer to take aerial photos of the property as part of its defense. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Like the movie, Richs article portrays Bilott as an unassuming and understated man driven by an innate sense of decency. This time he is seeking to force 3M and DuPont to pay for medical monitoring of every American exposed to PFAS. Wilbur Tennant shot this video in the late 1990s on his property in West Virginia. Then, in 1998 Bilott received a phone call from Wilbur Tennant who lived on his farm in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. It wasnt just his cattle dying. He knew his neighbors and his community was being poisoned, Bilott told the Post. Robert Bilott (born August 2, 1965) is an American environmental attorney from Cincinnati, Ohio.Bilott is known for the lawsuits against DuPont on behalf of plaintiffs injured by waste dumped in rural communities in 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. It is cut from the same cloth as movies like 'Erin Brockovich' and 'A Civil Action'. 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. Wilbur Tennant had become desperate. Bilott is currently suing several makers and users of these chemicals on behalf of all Americans with PFAS in their blood. The sometimes contentious tenor of Bilotts relationship with Wilbur Tennant is also true to life. For example, New Hampshire sued 3M and DuPont, along with a handful of companies that make firefighting foam containing PFAS. 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. The primary coordinates for Tennants Farm Pond Dam places it within the WV 26184 ZIP Code delivery area. Class Action - Part 1. Recently, the cows had started charging, trying to kick him and butt him with their heads, as this one had before she died. The carcasses lay where they fell. DuPont did not tell this to the Tennants at the time." The flies hummed as loud as bees. Did they think he would just sit by? 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." Because I was feeding her enough feed that she shoulda gained weight instead of losing weight. "PFASs are extremely persistent in the environment primarily because the chemical bond between the carbon and fluorine atoms is extremely strong and stable," according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The campaign coincided with the release of the film "Dark Waters" starring Mark Ruffalo inspired by the true story of Bilott, who discovered a community had been dangerously exposed for decades to deadly chemicals. He couldnt quite place it. 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. Its head was tipped back at an awkward angle. His mothers grandfather had bought this land, and it was the only home he had ever known. Records obtained by Bilott showed DuPont had determined in 1961 that PFOA is toxic in animals. When they bought half of the farm from Wilbur they began to use it for a landfill to store the toxins being . 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. Thats the largest gall I ever saw in my life! Excerpt from Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyers Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont. emily in paris savoir office. But that's just the start. And the man who started it all, Wilbur Tennant, won't see that resolution. 30 Broad Street, Suite 801 GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. He owned 200 cows that grazed on 600 acres. Calf born dead. Earl loved his cows, and the cows loved Earl. Sometimes the cattle watered at a spring-fed bathtub trough at the farthest end of the field, but mostly they drank from Dry Run. On the other side of his property line, Dry Run Landfill was filling up the little valley that had once belonged to his family. In 2000, Bilott found notations on an internal DuPont document that referred to a chemical called perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), also known as C8, in Dry Run Creek. The chemical companies are appealing the decision. Eight years later 3M paused one of its animal studies after every monkey fed PFOS died. Her eyes were sunk deep in her head. 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. ''Rob's letter lifted the curtain on a . GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. DuPont detected PFOA in the drinking water of communities near the Teflon plant. Maybe if he filmed it, they could see for themselves and realize he was not just some crazy old farmer.