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. In November 2019, the Washington Post hosted a podcast with Mark Ruffalo and Robert Bilott to discuss the film and the lawsuit. Joseph and Darlene Kiger in Park City, Utah, in 2018. And if it sounds familiar, it should. . Cows that drank from the creek had been healthy. They just turn their back and walk on. Thats the water right there, underneath that foam, the farmer said. 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. ''Rob's letter lifted the curtain on a . The company told the family that they wanted to use the land to . LinkedIn sets this cookie to store performed actions on the website. The farmhouse stood at the foot of a sloping meadow that rose into a bald knob. LinkedIn sets this cookie for LinkedIn Ads ID syncing. The olive green water had a greenish brown foam encrusting the grassy bank. GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. (Maddie McGarvey/for the Washington Post). For decades it had been the backbone of 3Ms Scotchgard brand of stain-resistant products. The problem, he thought, was not what they were eating but what they were drinking. "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.". At least thats what his family had been told thirteen years before by the company that had bought their land. PFOA and PFOS are among more than 9,000 versions of synthetic chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS. 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. DuPont bought C8 from 3M and used it to prevent Teflon from clumping during the manufacturing process. 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. 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. 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. Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected. Whatever had killed this cow appeared to Earl to have eaten her from the inside out. 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. The cookie is used to store and identify a users' unique session ID for the purpose of managing user session on the website. He died of a heart attack in 2009 at age 67. "Hold on to something," Jim Tennant warned as he fired up his tractor. That looks a little bit like cancer to me.. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Attorney Rob Bilott discusses the Fight Forever Chemicals campaign on Nov. 19, 2019. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. 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 . 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. '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. YSC cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages. Invest in quality science journalism by making a donation to Science Friday. Earl had come to believe that its water was now poisonedwith what, he did not know. From playing with computers to building networks: How the space for Black Software was made. wilbur tennant farm location . 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. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Hard labor was his birthright. His mothers grandfather had bought this land, and it was the only home he had ever known. Thank you for helping us continue making science fun for everyone. With no one from the government or even local veterinarians willing to do it, Earl decided to do an autopsy himself. The Teflon Toxin, Part 2: Wilbur Tennant vs. DuPont. Wilbur's brother, Jim, was also . He was 7 years old. But what about the alarming moment when a fire breaks out at the home of Joseph Kigers father, who shares his name? But friends knew the grandson of one of their neighbors had become an environmental lawyer in Cincinnati. 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. "I've been dealing with this for . 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. DuPont's own instructions specified that it was not to be flushed into surface water or sewers," according to the New York Times Magazine. As company scientists noted in internal documents, Nine out of ten people in the highest-dosed group were noticeably ill for an average of nine hours with flu-like symptoms that included chills, backache, fever, and coughing.. He requested all documents that DuPont had related to PFOA. When their attorney, Robert Bilott of Cincinnati, asked the EPA to order DuPont to stop using C8, the company sought a restraining . W. Earl Tennant Wilbur Earl Tennant, 67 of New England passed away suddenly at his residence May 15, 2009. . He couldnt quite place it. He toldThe Intercept in 2015 that it bubbled up out of glass containers and "was everywhere." Because I was feeding her enough feed that she shoulda gained weight instead of losing weight. 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. 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. Photo illustration by Slate. The other companies named in the lawsuit did not respond to Time's requests for comment. 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. Wilbur Earl Tennant and his siblings took over the land when their father abandoned them in the 1950s, according to the Huffington Post. Wilbur Tennant is on Facebook. Alternatives for PFOA and PFOS promoted as safe by industry are just as dangerous, if not more so, scientists are finding. We'll assume you're okay with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. That day had never come, so he decided he would make them watch a video. Ill do something about it.. 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. Wilbur Tennant had become desperate. And theyre going to find out one of these days that somebodys tired of it.. He zoomed in. As unbelievable as it may sound, DuPont really did, in the 1960s, offer some of its staff Teflon-laced cigarettes as a human experiment into the potential side effects of the PFOA-produced nonstick material, as the movie recounts. The underdog was a farmer whose family worked the land for generations, building it from a small operation to a thriving livelihood. The pipe flowed out of a collection pond at the low end of a landfill. This cookie is set by the provider Akamai Bot Manager. Wamsley suffered from ulcerative colitis, a condition that can lead to rectal cancer, which, in his case it, did. DuPont bought 66 acres of the Tennant's farm land from Wilbur Tennant's brother Jim and his wife Della [1]. The goal of the merger was to combine two businesses that dabbled in . 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. a series of Camcorder videos showing "soapy froth" in a creek running through DuPont's landfill property and into Tennant's farm. Today, that site is home to Chemours Washington Works, a spinoff of DuPont that employs more than 600 people and produces a variety of products used in construction, aerospace, and household goods. 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. Bilott is back in court again. A thicker foam gathered in eddies, trembling like egg whites whipped into stiff peaks so high they sometimes blew off on a breeze. The smell was odd. While the character of the hand-wringing Taft lawyer James Ross, portrayed by The Good Places William Jackson Harper, seems to have been invented, along with the scene where Ross suggests that Bilotts class-action suit might read to the public as nothing more than a shakedown of an iconic American company, Bilott did tell the New York Times that he perceived that there were some What the hell are you doing? responses within the firm. death of 260 cattle in West Virginia. And I burn them all. . He panned again: a bonfire on a grassy slope, a pyre of logs as fat as garbage cans. . Bill Pullman was portraying me, and hes taller and younger, and everyone appeared to be drinking. 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.. wilbur tennant farm location. 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.). At the end of the movie, I had a revelation. R ob Bilott, a corporate lawyer-turned-environmental crusader, doesn't much care if he's made enemies over the years. Wilbur Tennant showed Bilott alarming video footage in which his previously docile animals had turned . He was born at New England, a son of the late Blaine Tennant and Lydia (Wildman) Tennant. These cookies help provide anonymized information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. After contacting the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, he felt stonewalled. 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. This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Bilott is seeking class-action status in the case against several companies, including 3M and Chemours. 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. 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. LinkedIn sets this cookie to remember a user's language setting. Cookie used to remember the user's Disqus login credentials across websites that use Disqus. These cookies do not allow the tracking of navigation on other websites and the data collected is not combined or shared with third parties. There is about a teacup or so full of itits a real dark yeller. Did they think no one would notice? The JSESSIONID cookie is used by New Relic to store a session identifier so that New Relic can monitor session counts for an application. 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. Maps, Driving Directions & Local Area Information It dont do you any good to go to the DNR about it. At 72, Jim is so slight that he nearly . The TiPMix cookie is set by Azure to determine which web server the users must be directed to. DuPont determined that PFOA passed from pregnant employees to their fetuses. This cookie is used to manage the interaction with the online bots. Call him, they suggested. All rights reserved. There also are related substances called precursors that transform into PFOA and PFOS in the body or the environment. Thunderstorms occasionally swelled the creek so much that he couldnt wade across it. Dont understand that at all. I dont recall him drinking, Deitzler says. Something is the matter right there. are linked to DuPont's landfilling of PFOA. His pleas for help fell on deaf ears, according to the Huffington Post's article, "Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia." emily in paris savoir office. LOCATION. A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. Excerpt from Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyers Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont. The Taft offices are in Cincinnati, Ohio. The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. C8 is a "surfactant," a chemical compound that reduces surface tension. 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 . Wilbur Tennant is one farmer in a community who sees DuPont as something more than an employer. 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." 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. He owned 200 cows that grazed on 600 acres. Records obtained by Bilott showed DuPont had determined in 1961 that PFOA is toxic in animals. In 1981 , 3M found that ingestion of . Its something I have never run into before., He reached back into the cow and pulled out a liver that looked about right. Did they think no one would notice? It was small and ephemeral, fed by the rains that gathered in the creases of the ancient mountains that rumpled West Virginia and gave it those misty blue, almost-heaven vistas. For example, New Hampshire sued 3M and DuPont, along with a handful of companies that make firefighting foam containing PFAS. Teflon came into prominence in the 1940s, and with it came DuPont's rise as a chemical giant. Lawyers in Parkersburg, West Virginia, turned him down when he urged them to sue DuPont, then one of areas biggest employers. That calf had died miserable. They are still in all of us.. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience. The June 23, 2000, letter listed something in the landfill that didnt appear in the other documents or in Tafts chemical dictionaries. Wilbur Tennant, played by Bill Camp in the film, showed Bilott videos and pictures he had taken of his cows foaming at the mouth and staggering in ways they hadn't before, with lesions covering . GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. In short, I was playing for the opposite team, Bilott recalled in his memoir about the lawsuit he ended up filing against DuPont and the explosive aftermath. 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. LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser ID. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Science Friday is produced by the Science Friday Initiative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. 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. 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 . Wilbur Tennant explained that he and his four siblings had run the cattle farm since their father abandoned them as children. Its head was tipped back at an awkward angle. Now it was filled with specimens you might find in a pathology lab. 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 . 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). 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. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Standing walleyed in an open field was a polled Hereford red with a white face and floppy ears. Babies are born every day with these chemicals. DuPont responds with a study of the Tennant farm conducted with the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A) that . 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. 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. Bilott later determined it was one of the forever chemicals perfluorooctanoic acid, commonly referred to today as PFOA. Recently, the cows had started charging, trying to kick him and butt him with their heads, as this one had before she died. As Bilott details in Exposure, the April 23, 2001, incident was eventually confirmed between his legal team and DuPonts. As a father, he had watched his little girls splash around in its shallow ripples. The Devil We Know: Directed by Stephanie Soechtig, Jeremy Seifert. 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. Tennant wants to sue chemical giant . Bilotts law firm, Taft Stettinius & Hollister, typically represents corporate clients like DuPont in environmental cases, not people like Tennant. Tennant didnt live to witness the scope of what unfolded after he persuaded Bilott to file the lawsuit about his dead cows. DuPont immediately removed all female workers from areas where they might come into contact with the chemical.". It was contaminated with high levels of PFOA. 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. This time he is seeking to force 3M and DuPont to pay for medical monitoring of every American exposed to PFAS. Wilbur Earl Tennant and his siblings took over the land when their father abandoned them in the 1950s, according to the Huffington Post. Similarly, DuPonts presence in the Ohio and West Virginia Chemical Valley regions really did resemble the company town vibe portrayed in Dark Waters, with citizens frequently too enthralled by the multinationals economic benefits to question its impact on their health and safety. Studies have found potential links between PFOA exposure and high cholesterol, thyroid disorders, and testicular and kidney cancers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. C8 and other long-chain per-fluorinated chemicals are used in a myriad of household, industrial, and commercial products. It is based on a shocking true story, where a series . She had a calf over there. No one would help him. He knew the folks at the DNR, because they gave him a special permit to hunt on his land out of season. This cookie, set by Cloudflare, is used to support Cloudflare Bot Management. Anyone could see that something was terribly wrong, not only with the landfill itself but with the agencies responsible for monitoring it. Back in the '90s, Tennant noticed something strange was happening to his cows. Wilbur Tennant shot this video in the late 1990s on his property in West Virginia. I dont understand them great big dark red places across there. And, like many Grisham novels, it's a tale worthy of the big screen. None of this information was shared with the public. This cookie is installed by Google Universal Analytics to restrain request rate and thus limit the collection of data on high traffic sites. He had stopped feeding his family venison from the deer he shot on his land. In 1973 she [took] him to the cattle farm belonging to the Tennants' neighbors, the Grahams, with whom White was friendly. Somebodys not doing their duty, he said to the camera, to anyone who would listen. (Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call). The company turned this land into the unlined Dry Run Landfill. 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. New York, NY 10004. By the late 1990s, West Virginia farmer Wilbur Tennant was at his wits end. The carcasses lay where they fell. He walked there every day to count heads and check fences. Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer's Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont. The suit, rather than seeking compensation, requests that the companies fund independent, scientific studies on the health effects of PFAS, according to Time Magazine. And if it weren't for one West Virginia farmer, Wilbur Tennant, we still might not know much about them. It begs the question: How many cancers and other health effects are we willing to accept?, Read the investigation: Tribune finds more than 8 million Illinoisans get drinking water from a utility where forever chemicals have been detected >>>. 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. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. "If that's what it takes to get people the information they need and to protect people, we're willing to do it.". In 2005, DuPont agreed to phase out its use of C8 (PFOA) by 2015, according to The Intercept. 3M and DuPont have argued in court and in public statements that neither chemical is harmful to people at typical levels of exposure. The chemical companies are appealing the decision. . The federal agency notes that it has made significant progress in addressing the public health concerns "from issuing groundwater cleanup guidance to proposing a positive regulatory determination for both PFOA and PFOS, EPA has made progress under every aspect of the Action Plan.". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Her white hide was crusted with diarrhea, and her hip bones tented her hide. 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. One tooth had an abscess so large he reckoned he could stick an ice pick clear under it. Neither Tennant nor Bilott would accept this as the end of the case. Join Facebook to connect with Wilbur Tennant and others you may know. The West Virginia-based . Bilott did marry a fellow lawyer, Sarah Barlage, who left her career defending corporations against workers compensation claims to raise their sons. . Turns out his grandmother lived in the same town as the farmer and that's the connection that brought the underdog and the hero together. 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. In less than two years he had lost at least one hundred calves and more than fifty cows. This video contains graphic imagery. The state vet wouldnt even come out to the farm. June 14, 2022. In 2005, the company agreed to fund studies on the health effects of C8. No matter how much he fed them, they always looked to be wasting away, and some even bled from their mouth as they bellowed, according to the New York Times Magazine.