Bilott is seeking class-action status in the case against several companies, including 3M and Chemours. And if it weren't for one West Virginia farmer, Wilbur Tennant, we still might not know much about them. LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser ID. wilbur tennant farm location. 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. Now, he was feeding them twice as much and watching them waste away. NID cookie, set by Google, is used for advertising purposes; to limit the number of times the user sees an ad, to mute unwanted ads, and to measure the effectiveness of ads. Home. 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. No one believed him when he told them about the things he saw happening to his land. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. Joseph and Darlene Kiger in Park City, Utah, in 2018. About 600 are in use today, according to the EPA. Join Facebook to connect with Wilbur Tennant and others you may know. 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 . Tennant Farm, December 1999, from DuPont Cattle Team Report. du Pont de Nemours and Co, better known as DuPont, on behalf of a West Virginia farmer whose cows were dying. I dont recall him drinking, Deitzler says. 30 Broad Street, Suite 801 "Hold on to something," Jim Tennant warned as he fired up his tractor. Did they think no one would notice? Michael Hawthorne is a Pulitzer-finalist investigative reporter who focuses on the environment and public health for the Chicago Tribune. DuPont established a presence along the Ohio River in 1948 with the Washington Works plant near Parkersburg. Listen to an interview with Bilott about the chemical lawsuits on Science Friday. "I've been dealing with this for . 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 was different from the regular dead-cow smells he had dealt with all his life. Nor was it on the list of substances regulated by the EPA. At the end of the movie, I had a revelation. Patches of missing hair, discolorations in their . 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. He requested all documents that DuPont had related to PFOA. After contacting the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, he felt stonewalled. Initial data showed evidence that it did. The problem, he thought, was not what they were eating but what they were drinking. In another field, a grown cow lay dead. The herd that had once been nearly three hundred head had dwindled to just about half that. Attached to it was a gallbladder that didnt. He especially enjoyed hunting, working in the garden and around the farm with his grandson Josh and . His mothers grandfather had bought this land, and it was the only home he had ever known. Lawyers in Parkersburg, West Virginia, turned him down when he urged them to sue DuPont, then one of areas biggest employers. The use of these cookies is strictly limited to measuring the site's audience. In 2005, the company agreed to fund studies on the health effects of C8. DuPont de Nemours & Co., used to dump chemical waste from the company's . The first thing Im gonna do is cut this head open, check these teeth.. At 72, Jim is so slight that he nearly . 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. Created by Bluecadet. DuPont's scientists understood that the landfill drained into the Tennants' remaining property, and they tested the water in Dry Run Creek. 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 cookie does not store any personally identifiable data. 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. This cow died about twenty, thirty minutes ago, Earl said. The visit to the Grahams' farm was one of his happiest childhood memories. The Devil We Know: Directed by Stephanie Soechtig, Jeremy Seifert. are linked to DuPont's landfilling of PFOA. Wilbur Tennant shot this video on his property between 1995 and 1997. "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. 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 . 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. They were green like the foamy water that ran out of a pipe from the nearby Dry Run Landfill and into the creek from which the Tennant cattle drank. Its just like that other calf up yonder, he said, panning over the matted grass. Dark Waters'messed up true story reveals an emerging public health and environmental threat, the pervasiveness of "forever chemicals," and an alleged corporate cover-up. His freezer had brimmed with venison, wild turkey, squirrel, and rabbit. The farmers name was Wilbur Earl Tennant. 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. A creek connects the landfill and the fields of Tennant's farm. 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. The carcasses lay where they fell. Mr. Tennant believed early on that something coming out of the plant and landfill was poisoning the water and the animals on his farm. Where they should have been smooth, they looked ropy, covered with ridges. 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. 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. In the meantime, people are drinking these chemicals every day. This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. 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. "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. Wilbur Tennant's family farm was located next to a "non-hazardous" landfill operated by the chemical company. It was to be incinerated or sent to chemical-waste facilities. People who didnt know him very well called him Wilbur, but friends and family called him Earl. 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. It dont do you any good to go to the DNR about it. . He died of . He had carried a rifle as he went about the farm, always ready to shoot dinner. The farmer's name was Wilbur Earl Tennant. Did they think he would just sit by? Its surface was matte with a crusty film that wrinkled against the shore. As Bilott recollected in a panel discussion with the Washington Post, it was Wilburs obstinate refusal to simply take his monetary settlement and walk away that compelled Bilott to keep pursuing new legal avenues to hold DuPont to account. It also helps in fraud preventions. Dozens began dramatically losing weight, dying even after Tennant doubled their feed on the advice of veterinarians who couldnt determine what was killing the animals. And, based on Centers for Disease Control data, PFAS chemicals were found the blood of 98 percent of people studied. At least thats what his family had been told thirteen years before by the company that had bought their land. In 1999, a farm farmily sued DuPont for the death of their cattle and the ill health of exposed family and farm workers. 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. R ob Bilott, a corporate lawyer-turned-environmental crusader, doesn't much care if he's made enemies over the years. I could find no record of any such incident taking place. 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. Vacillating Wildly From Dispiriting to Exhilarating, A New Biopic Reduces One of Historys Greatest Writers to a Cottagecore Emo Girl, How Steven Spielbergs Autobiographical New Movie Rewrites His Story, The Lawyer Who Became DuPonts Worst Nightmare, He knew his neighbors and his community was being poisoned, commissioned a photographer to take aerial photos. Bilott is currently suing several makers and users of these chemicals on behalf of all Americans with PFAS in their blood. DuPont immediately removed all female workers from areas where they might come into contact with the chemical.". The sometimes contentious tenor of Bilotts relationship with Wilbur Tennant is also true to life. By that point, 153 animals died had died grisly deaths on his property . These cookies help provide anonymized information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Much like many river cities, Parkersburg's history speaks of a working class, industrial heritage, which saw companies set up shop on the shores of the Ohio River, bringing jobs and economic stability. 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. C8 is a "surfactant," a chemical compound that reduces surface tension. Used by Yahoo to provide ads, content or analytics. working in the garden and around the farm with his grandson . DuPont named this sight Dry Run Landfill after the creek that ran onto the Tennant farm. (Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call). Tennant wants to sue chemical giant . June 14, 2022. 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 Teflon Toxin, Part 2: Wilbur Tennant vs. DuPont. 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 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." His hand shook as he pressed the zoom button, zeroing in on a stagnant pool. In October 2018, he filed a lawsuit on behalf of a firefighter, who used fire suppression foam and equipment containing PFAS for 40 years. Recently, the cows had started charging, trying to kick him and butt him with their heads, as this one had before she died. The cattle farmer stood at the edge of a creek that cut through a sun-dappled hollow. It is cut from the same cloth as movies like 'Erin Brockovich' and 'A Civil Action'. With no one from the government or even local veterinarians willing to do it, Earl decided to do an autopsy himself. 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. Predictably, his complaints to government went ignored. It looked, at most, a few days old. Cookie used to remember the user's Disqus login credentials across websites that use Disqus. 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. Calf born dead. Earl loved his cows, and the cows loved Earl. Records obtained by Bilott showed DuPont had determined in 1961 that PFOA is toxic in animals. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. 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. Born: March 6, 1942 . 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 cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. But you just give me time. These cookies do not allow the tracking of navigation on other websites and the data collected is not combined or shared with third parties. (Maddie McGarvey/for the Washington Post) If Wilbur Earl Tennant's cows hadn't died from a mysterious wasting disease during the . 1: The Farm. Wilbur Earl Tennant. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The West Virginia-based . 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 . They're in virtually everything we use, including stain-resistant fabric and carpets, nonstick cookware, water-repellent clothing, and firefighting foam. Black smoke curled into the daylight. The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. 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. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. . When he cut out the other lung, he noted dark purple splotches where they should have been fluffy and pink. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Bilott has spent more than twenty years litigating hazardous dumping of the chemicals perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS). Issued by Microsoft's ASP.NET Application, this cookie stores session data during a user's website visit. Earl had sought help, but no one would step up. Now it was filled with specimens you might find in a pathology lab. A load balancing cookie set to ensure requests by a client are sent to the same origin server. On the other line was Wilbur Tennant (played by Bill Camp), a cattle farmer from Parkersburg, W.V. Sometimes the cattle watered at a spring-fed bathtub trough at the farthest end of the field, but mostly they drank from Dry Run. 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. Bubbles formed as it tumbled over stones in a sudsy film. This cookie is used to manage the interaction with the online bots. There also are related substances called precursors that transform into PFOA and PFOS in the body or the environment. Earl had come to believe that its water was now poisonedwith what, he did not know. PFAS are ubiquitous. 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. This is the hundred and seventh calf thats met this problem right here. LinkedIn sets this cookie to remember a user's language setting. The goal of the merger was to combine two businesses that dabbled in . Tennant's farm is close to a newly DuPont-owned landfill. (Ammonium perfluorooctanoate or C8) wastes near the farm. How accurately does Dark Waters depict the twists and turns of this maze? DuPonts lawyers had a different perspective on the incident, however, writing in an email, It is a federal offense to threaten violence against an aircraft carrying passengers and Please be advised that the helicopter pilot has indicated that he will pursue todays incident with federal authorities.. Wilbur Tennant had become desperate. On August 31st of 2017, E. I. Dupont de Nemours Company and the Dow Chemical Company merged as part of a $130 billion merger. 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 company told the family that they wanted to use the land to . The local employer wanted to buy some of their property for a landfill for its Washington Works plant nearby, where it produces, among other things, Teflon, which contains the chemical C8. Azure sets this cookie for routing production traffic by specifying the production slot. Then, in 1998 Bilott received a phone call from Wilbur Tennant who lived on his farm in Parkersburg, West Virginia. It is a chemical used in the manufacturing process of Teflon. He was born at New England, a son of the late Blaine Tennant and Lydia (Wildman) Tennant. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. This cookie is used for load balancing purposes.