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. Somebodys not doing their duty, he said to the camera, to anyone who would listen. Photo illustration by Slate. It looked, at most, a few days old. It dont do you any good to go to the DNR about it. 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. And it takes immense courage and conviction to do that. It dont do you any good to go to the DNR about it. a series of Camcorder videos showing "soapy froth" in a creek running through DuPont's landfill property and into Tennant's farm. 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. Birds sang through the white-hot humidity as he panned the camcorder across the creek. Initial data showed evidence that it did. And the man who started it all, Wilbur Tennant, won't see that resolution. Details of what DuPont allegedly knew and when came to light in pages and pages of documents, initially as part of the lawsuit Bilott filed against the company on behalf of Wilbur Tennant and then in more than 3,000 subsequent personal injury suits that have followed in the past two decades. Todd Haynes new film Dark Waters wades into some of the most complicated topics in public health, chemistry, and the law to dramatize the story of environmental attorney Robert Bilott and his nearly two decades of civil actions against DuPont. 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. 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. Wilbur's brother, Jim, was also . No one believed him when he told them about the things he saw happening to his land. As a man, he had walked its banks with his wife. He was speaking to the camcorder pressed to his eye. 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. It kicked and thumped and wallered around there like you wouldnt believe.. Teflon came into prominence in the 1940s, and with it came DuPont's rise as a chemical giant. Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. 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.. That things about . His name is Wilbur Tennant. Yet to this day the companies deny responsibility, Bilott said in an interview. The edge in his voice was anger. Cookie used to remember the user's Disqus login credentials across websites that use Disqus. Location of conflict: Little Hocking, City of Belpre, Tuppers Plains, Village of Pomeroy, Lubeck Public Service District, and Mason County Public Service District: . In his research, Bilott had come across a DuPont letter that referred to a chemical known as . YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. SiteLock sets this cookie to provide cloud-based website security services. He knew his neighbors and his community was being poisoned, Bilott told the Post. Dry spells shrank it to a necklace of pools that winked with silver minnows. . It was to be incinerated or sent to chemical-waste facilities. The TiPMix cookie is set by Azure to determine which web server the users must be directed to. The films portrayal of the physical toll that the excruciating, decadeslong legal battle against DuPont seems to have had on Bilotts health is also accurate. About 600 are in use today, according to the EPA. Like the movie, Richs article portrays Bilott as an unassuming and understated man driven by an innate sense of decency. July 7, 1996 Washington, West Virginia. There is about a teacup or so full of itits a real dark yeller. I fed her at least a gallon of grain a day. "I've been dealing with this for . AWSALB is an application load balancer cookie set by Amazon Web Services to map the session to the target. Its dumping pits were unlined, designed for the disposal of nonhazardous wasteoffice paper and everyday trash. 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. 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. 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. The stream looked like many other streams that flowed through his sprawling farm. And after Bilott watched and listened, he took action. Bilott later determined it was one of the forever chemicals perfluorooctanoic acid, commonly referred to today as PFOA. The visit to the Grahams' farm was one of his happiest childhood memories. 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. Photos by Focus Features and Mike Coppola/Getty Images. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. On August 31st of 2017, E. I. Dupont de Nemours Company and the Dow Chemical Company merged as part of a $130 billion merger. Just months before Rob Bilott made partner at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, he received a call on his direct line from a cattle farmer. Revelations by another chemical company gave Bilott leverage to go back into court and request more records from DuPont. You could poke it with a stick and leave a hole. . Excerpt from Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyers Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont. He focuses on the froth-covered creek before the tape cuts to a dissected calf with blackened teeth and oddly colored organs. With no one from the government or even local veterinarians willing to do it, Earl decided to do an autopsy himself. Hunting had been one of Earls greatest pleasures. But now it seemed they were ignoring him. 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. When DuPont settled that lawsuit in 2004, the company agreed to finance a study of PFOAs health effects. 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. In November 2019, the Washington Post hosted a podcast with Mark Ruffalo and Robert Bilott to discuss the film and the lawsuit. DuPont de Nemours & Co., used to dump chemical waste from the company's . Earl had sought help, but no one would step up. Earl pulled on white gloves and pried open the cows mouth, probing her gums and teeth. The flies hummed as loud as bees. Seventy years later these chemicals are in our soil, our air, in wildlife. Listen to an interview with Bilott about the chemical lawsuits on Science Friday. 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 . But a single letter, sent by a DuPont scientist to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, began unraveling a more alarming story. 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. Call him, they suggested. Tennant and his brother Jim wanted to get to the bottom of it, so they dissected some carcasses. He sliced open the chest cavity, pulled out a lung, and turned the camera back on. The calf was engulfed in a black, humming mist. Attorney Rob Bilott discusses the Fight Forever Chemicals campaign on Nov. 19, 2019. On the other side of his property line, Dry Run Landfill was filling up the little valley that had once belonged to his family. I dont understand them great big dark red places across there. 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 >>>. oh, two-thirds bigger than it should be., The kidneys, too, looked abnormal. This cookie is managed by Amazon Web Services and is used for load balancing. At the end of the movie, I had a revelation. That day had never come, so he decided he would make them watch a video. 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. Thats where theyre supposed to come down here and pull water samples, to see whats in that water. He pointed the camera at a stagnant pool of water flanked by knee-high grass. 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. Photos by Focus Features and EPK. Bilott is currently suing several makers and users of these chemicals on behalf of all Americans with PFAS in their blood. The JSESSIONID cookie is used by New Relic to store a session identifier so that New Relic can monitor session counts for an application. DuPont responds with a study of the Tennant farm conducted with the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A) that . Wilbur Tennant. DuPont's response was they would settle with the Tennant's however Bilott was . No one would help him. June 14, 2022; salem witch trials podcast lore LinkedIn sets this cookie to remember a user's language setting. 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. DuPont and 3M kept the U.S. EPA in the dark for years, company and government records show. "Though PFOA was not classified by the government as a hazardous substance, 3M sent DuPont recommendations on how to dispose of it. Tennant didnt live to witness the scope of what unfolded after he persuaded Bilott to file the lawsuit about his dead cows. And if it weren't for one West Virginia farmer, Wilbur Tennant, we still might not know much about them. Bill Pullman was portraying me, and hes taller and younger, and everyone appeared to be drinking. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Wilbur Tennant showed Bilott alarming video footage in which his previously docile animals had turned . 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. 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 . Tennant had a problem. 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. It wasnt his first. In the 1990s Wilbur began to notice weird deformities in his cows and some of them were even dying. And, based on Centers for Disease Control data, PFAS chemicals were found the blood of 98 percent of people studied. In May 2015, a consortium of scientists across many disciplines released a document called the Madrid Statement. 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. wilbur tennant farm location . This cookie is native to PHP applications. (He later would be played by actor Mark Ruffalo in the 2019 film Dark Waters.). The sometimes contentious tenor of Bilotts relationship with Wilbur Tennant is also true to life. 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. They are everywhere. The other companies named in the lawsuit did not respond to Time's requests for comment. He had stopped feeding his family venison from the deer he shot on his land. . 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. One person can't always cause a change, but one person can set off a chain of reactions to cause change. Its surface was matte with a crusty film that wrinkled against the shore. The farm spread roughly 600 acres, and had a total of 200 cattle roaming around. PFOA and PFOS are among more than 9,000 versions of synthetic chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS. Then one autumn day in 2000, local schoolteacher Joe Kiger . The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". Tennant Farm, December 1999, from DuPont Cattle Team Report. 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 responsible. She had spent the summer in the hollow, drinking out of Dry Run until shed started to act strangely. Azure sets this cookie for routing production traffic by specifying the production slot. Something is the matter right there. "In 1991, DuPont scientists determined an internal safety limit for PFOA concentration in drinking water: one part per billion. He didnt believe it anymore. It is cut from the same cloth as movies like 'Erin Brockovich' and 'A Civil Action'. Even down near the tips of it. 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." 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. DuPont's own instructions specified that it was not to be flushed into surface water or sewers," according to the New York Times Magazine. . The first thing Im gonna do is cut this head open, check these teeth.. The substance is stable, persistent, and very difficult to break down. 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. are linked to DuPont's landfilling of PFOA. 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. Bilott did marry a fellow lawyer, Sarah Barlage, who left her career defending corporations against workers compensation claims to raise their sons. His earlier efforts had all revealed unpleasant surprises: tumors, abnormal organs, unnatural smells. The cattle farmer stood at the edge of a creek that cut through a sun-dappled hollow. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Hard labor was his birthright. 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. 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. The cookie is used to store and identify a users' unique session ID for the purpose of managing user session on the website. In the meantime, people are drinking these chemicals every day. In October 2018, he filed a lawsuit on behalf of a firefighter, who used fire suppression foam and equipment containing PFAS for 40 years. ATSDR/CDC also notes that more studies need to be done in the area of health effects, particularly on shorter-chain substances. He couldnt quite place it. 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. He made for an imposing figure at six feet tall, lean and broad shouldered, his . These cookies do not allow the tracking of navigation on other websites and the data collected is not combined or shared with third parties. Jim still calls it "the home place," although its windows are now boarded up and the outhouse is crumbling into the field. 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 . You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. Over the decades they steadily acquired land and cattle, until 200 cows roamed more than 600 hilly acres. The underdog was a farmer whose family worked the land for generations, building it from a small operation to a thriving livelihood. They would nuzzle him as he scratched their heads. This cookie is used for storing country code selected from country selector. This cookie, set by Cloudflare, is used to support Cloudflare Bot Management. 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. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. "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. Wilbur Tennant is on Facebook. 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 on his property between 1995 and 1997. All Public Member Trees results for Wilbur Tennant. Wilbur Earl Tennant. People who didnt know him very well called him Wilbur, but friends and family called him Earl. May 15, 2009; Location: Washington, West Virginia; Tribute & Message From The Family. And theyre going to find out one of these days that somebodys tired of it.. Did they think no one would notice? The pipe flowed out of a collection pond at the low end of a landfill. PFAS are ubiquitous. Thats whats so scary about these chemicals, said Jamie DeWitt, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at East Carolina University who studies PFAS. 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 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. ''Rob's letter lifted the curtain on a . . A key component of Teflon was C8, also known as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). 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. Bilott has spent more than twenty years litigating hazardous dumping of the chemicals perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS). Two of seven babies born to Teflon plant employees in 1981 had facial deformities similar to what 3M had found in newborn rats. 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. 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.. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Tennants Farm Pond Dam is a cultural feature (dam) in Wood County. Patches of missing hair, discolorations in their . 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. working in the garden and around the farm with his grandson . The Taft offices are in Cincinnati, Ohio. "The innards was bright green.". At fifty-four, Earl was an imposing figure, six feet tall, lean and oxshouldered, with sandpaper hands and a permanent squint. She had a calf over there. The company told the family that they wanted to use the land to . Quite soon after DuPont establishes their landfill, weird things start happening to his cattle. It contained an extraordinarily high concentration of PFOA. A videotape Tennant shot with a VHS camcorder shows emaciated cows with tumors on their hides. He had carried a rifle as he went about the farm, always ready to shoot dinner. Maybe if he filmed it, they could see for themselves and realize he was not just some crazy old farmer. 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). Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie is used to record the user consent for the cookies in the "Advertisement" category . . Yes, DuPont is still in business, although it has struggled slightly to survive independently from time to time due to its poor public reputation. I noticed that in at least one of the scenes where I was portrayed. 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. 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?" All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. Nearly 70,000 people participated. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. 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. Wilbur Tennant is one farmer in a community who sees DuPont as something more than an employer. Its something I have never run into before., He reached back into the cow and pulled out a liver that looked about right. 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. 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. By the 1980s, DuPont had allegedly begun dumping PFOA waste into the Dry Creek Landfill, near the Tennant property. Edit your search or learn more. How would you like for your livestock to have to drink something like that? he asked his imagined audience. His pleas for help fell on deaf ears, according to the Huffington Post's article, "Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia." In real life as in the film, Bilotts earliest professional experiences after law school were working on behalf of chemical companies for his employer, Taft Stettinius & Hollister, providing the firms corporate clients with guidance on how best to comply with the so-called Superfund law passed by Congress in 1980 to regulate sites tainted with hazardous substances. "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. Tennant's farm is close to a newly DuPont-owned landfill. By that point, 153 animals died had died grisly deaths on his property . Joseph and Darlene Kiger in Park City, Utah, in 2018. So, the couple sold about 60 acres to DuPont. New York, NY 10004. In 1999, a farm farmily sued DuPont for the death of their cattle and the ill health of exposed family and farm workers. emily in paris savoir office. VigLink sets this cookie to show users relevant advertisements and also limit the number of adverts that are shown to them. 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. He was 7 years old. The spleen was thinner and whiter than any spleen he had come cross. The West Virginia-based . Wilbur Earl Tennant, 67 of New England passed away suddenly at his residence May 15, 2009. 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. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. Now it was filled with specimens you might find in a pathology lab. . These included a polluted river . 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. A month before DuPonts letter about PFOA, the Minnesota-based conglomerate 3M announced it would stop making a chemical with a similar sounding name: perfluorooctane sulfonic acid or PFOS. Trial lawyer Harry Deitzler, whos played by Bill Pullman in the film, told Slate in a telephone interview that while Dark Waters captured Bilotts sense of commitment and general modesty, it was less accurate in its depiction on one particular issue: Robert Bilott has not been known to be an especially big fan of Mai Tais, either in general or on special occasions. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". Tennant told him that DuPont had bought land from his family that was adjacent to his farm, for what the company had assured him would be a non-hazardous landfill, according to a letter Bilott later filed with the Environmental Protection Agency. Then, in 1998 Bilott received a phone call from Wilbur Tennant who lived on his farm in Parkersburg, West Virginia. 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. In 1998, corporate lawyer Robert Bilott ( Mark Ruffalo) is approached by Wilbur Tennant ( Bill Camp) a farmer from his hometown of Parkersburg, West Virginia. I could find no record of any such incident taking place. Its just like that other calf up yonder, he said, panning over the matted grass. This cookie is associated with Django web development platform for python. 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 . The use of these cookies is strictly limited to measuring the site's audience. . These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. These "forever chemicals" are an emerging global health and environmental issue. This cookie is installed by Google Universal Analytics to restrain request rate and thus limit the collection of data on high traffic sites. 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 . But that's just the start. The Messed Up True Story Behind Dark Waters, Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. But you just give me time. Wilbur Tennant shot this video in the late 1990s on his property in West Virginia. . That looks a little bit like cancer to me.. They just turn their back and walk on. Bilott is back in court again. Predictably, his complaints to government went ignored. It was contaminated with high levels of PFOA. . His cattle now drank from its pools. LinkedIn sets this cookie to store performed actions on the website. In time, the connection between the Tennants and DuPont would run as deep as the Ohio River. W. Earl Tennant Wilbur Earl Tennant, 67 of New England passed away suddenly at his residence May 15, 2009. . (Ammonium perfluorooctanoate or C8) wastes near the farm.