GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. 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. The olive green water had a greenish brown foam encrusting the grassy bank. At fifty-four, Earl was an . That day had never come, so he decided he would make them watch a video. "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.". 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. Maybe if he filmed it, they could see for themselves and realize he was not just some crazy old farmer. . DuPont appeared to be concerned enough about PFOA that the company tested employees at the Teflon plant and found the chemical in their blood, the letter to the EPA revealed. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The stream looked like many other streams that flowed through his sprawling farm. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. AWSALB is an application load balancer cookie set by Amazon Web Services to map the session to the target. The edge in his voice was anger. Eight years later 3M paused one of its animal studies after every monkey fed PFOS died. This cookie is used for load balancing purposes. Over the decades they steadily acquired land and cattle, until 200 cows roamed more than 600 hilly acres. 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 . Location of conflict: Little Hocking, City of Belpre, Tuppers Plains, Village of Pomeroy, Lubeck Public Service District, and Mason County Public Service District: . Attorney Rob Bilott discusses the Fight Forever Chemicals campaign on Nov. 19, 2019. Neither Tennant nor Bilott would accept this as the end of the case. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Bilott has spent more than twenty years litigating hazardous dumping of the chemicals perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS). 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. In 1998, corporate lawyer Robert Bilott ( Mark Ruffalo) is approached by Wilbur Tennant ( Bill Camp) a farmer from his hometown of Parkersburg, West Virginia. This cookie is installed by Google Universal Analytics to restrain request rate and thus limit the collection of data on high traffic sites. How accurately does Dark Waters depict the twists and turns of this maze? working in the garden and around the farm with his grandson . It also helps in fraud preventions. The farmhouse stood at the foot of a sloping meadow that rose into a bald knob. Lawyers in Parkersburg, West Virginia, turned him down when he urged them to sue DuPont, then one of areas biggest employers. 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. And if it weren't for one West Virginia farmer, Wilbur Tennant, we still might not know much about them. 3M and DuPont have argued in court and in public statements that neither chemical is harmful to people at typical levels of exposure. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. He focuses on the froth-covered creek before the tape cuts to a dissected calf with blackened teeth and oddly colored organs. None of this information was shared with the public. The cookie does not store any personally identifiable data. Excerpt from Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyers Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Then one autumn day in 2000, local schoolteacher Joe Kiger . . We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Because I was feeding her enough feed that she shoulda gained weight instead of losing weight. Thats the largest gall I ever saw in my life! du Pont de Nemours and Co, better known as DuPont, on behalf of a West Virginia farmer whose cows were dying. She had spent the summer in the hollow, drinking out of Dry Run until shed started to act strangely. Bilott had now discovered the cause in the deaths of the cattle on Tennant's farm and had called DuPont regarding this information. In time, the connection between the Tennants and DuPont would run as deep as the Ohio River. July 7, 1996 Washington, West Virginia. The primary coordinates for Tennants Farm Pond Dam places it within the WV 26184 ZIP Code delivery area. This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. The cattle farmer stood at the edge of a creek that cut through a sun-dappled hollow. Tennant recounted to anyone who would listen that he'd lost about 100 calves and 50 cows over the years. Her eyes were sunk deep in her head. DuPont named this sight Dry Run Landfill after the creek that ran onto the Tennant farm. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. This cookie is associated with Django web development platform for python. Tennant was a farmer who sold part of his land in Parkersburg, West Virginia, to DuPont, for Wilbur Tennant vs. DuPont on Vimeo Flies. The spleen was thinner and whiter than any spleen he had come cross. Anyone could see that something was terribly wrong, not only with the landfill itself but with the agencies responsible for monitoring it. 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 it takes immense courage and conviction to do that. He hardly ever saw minnows swimming in the creek anymore, except the ones that floated belly up. Anne Hathaway as Sarah Bilott and the real-life Sarah Bilott. Wilbur Earl Tennant and his siblings took over the land when their father abandoned them in the 1950s, according to the Huffington Post. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Science Friday is produced by the Science Friday Initiative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. 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. A group of citizens in West Virginia challenges a powerful corporation to be more environmentally responsible. 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. "In 1991, DuPont scientists determined an internal safety limit for PFOA concentration in drinking water: one part per billion. 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. 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. At fifty-four, Earl was an imposing figure, six feet tall, lean and oxshouldered, with sandpaper hands and a permanent squint. It was really his dedication to bringing that out that really inspired me to try to find a way to address the bigger problem., Amazingly, the Pakula-esque paranoid thriller scene, in which Wilbur Tennant spots a low-level helicopter hovering ominously over his property, uses the scope of his hunting rifle to better examine the vehicle, and scares it off in the process, did in fact occur. Wilbur 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 . Cookie used to remember the user's Disqus login credentials across websites that use Disqus. Washington, West Virginia. emily in paris savoir office. All rights reserved. Quite soon after DuPont establishes their landfill, weird things start happening to his cattle. Robert Bilott is a partner at Taft, Stettinius & Hollister LLP in Cincinnati, Ohio. 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. PFAS are ubiquitous. Not even buzzards and scavengers would eat them. Now it looked like dirty dishwater. In 1981 , 3M found that ingestion of . But what about the alarming moment when a fire breaks out at the home of Joseph Kigers father, who shares his name? Issued by Microsoft's ASP.NET Application, this cookie stores session data during a user's website visit. Joseph and Darlene Kiger in Park City, Utah, in 2018. According to the New York Times Magazine, "By 1990, DuPont had dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA sludge into Dry Run Landfill. "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. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". Her calf, black and white, lay dead on its side in a circle of matted 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. 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. He zoomed in. Editors note: In 1999, Robert Bilott sued E.I. 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. There is something wrong with this water, Tennant says on the videotape. 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. His name is Wilbur Tennant. LinkedIn sets this cookie for LinkedIn Ads ID syncing. 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. He zoomed out and panned over to an industrial pipe spewing froth into the creek. The Messed Up True Story Behind Dark Waters, Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia. And I burn them all. Invest in quality science journalism by making a donation to Science Friday. In his research, Bilott had come across a DuPont letter that referred to a chemical known as . Thats the water right there, underneath that foam, the farmer said. . Copyright 2019 by Robert Bilott. In 1970, a company that purchased 3Ms PFOS-based firefighting foam abruptly halted a demonstration after it killed fish in a nearby stream. are linked to DuPont's landfilling of PFOA. Bryan Schutmaat for The New York Times. 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. The cattle farmer stood at the edge of a creek that cut through a sun-dappled hollow. Taking on the case of Wilbur Tennant (played by Bill Camp in the film), a West Virginian farmer whose land is contaminated from toxic run-off dumped near his premises by DuPont Company, Bilott (Ruffalo) quickly encounters the gargantuan machine of corporate disinformation, negligence, cover-up, and strong-arm tactics that allow the company to . His cattle now drank from its pools. The sometimes contentious tenor of Bilotts relationship with Wilbur Tennant is also true to life. DuPont responds with a study of the Tennant farm conducted with the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A) that . Bilott is currently suing several makers and users of these chemicals on behalf of all Americans with PFAS in their blood. 30 Broad Street, Suite 801 Nor was it on the list of substances regulated by the EPA. Thats why they called it Dry Run. DuPont's scientists understood that the landfill drained into the Tennants' remaining property, and they tested the water in Dry Run Creek. A key component of Teflon was C8, also known as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). Wilbur Tennant is one farmer in a community who sees DuPont as something more than an employer. 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 Im gonna cut her open and find out what caused her to die. Similarly, Bilotts boss, Tom Terp (Tim Robbins), is not on the record as ever having threatened to cut Bilotts balls off and feed them to DuPont himself if his subordinate were to ever again unilaterally send internal documents found via discovery to a federal regulatory agency or speak on his findings to Congress. Then, in 1998 Bilott received a phone call from Wilbur Tennant who lived on his farm in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected.