New York, NY 10004. He owned 200 cows that grazed on 600 acres. In May 2015, a consortium of scientists across many disciplines released a document called the Madrid Statement. All rights reserved. November 25, 2019 12:03 PM EST. wilbur tennant farm location. As Bilott details in Exposure, the April 23, 2001, incident was eventually confirmed between his legal team and DuPonts. Wilbur Tennant shot this video on his property between 1995 and 1997. 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). riding horses, milking cows and watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown on TV. 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. I fed her at least a gallon of grain a day. Revelations by another chemical company gave Bilott leverage to go back into court and request more records from DuPont. According to the book, DuPont had commissioned a photographer to take aerial photos of the property as part of its defense. 0 Comments Comments He had stopped feeding his family venison from the deer he shot on his land. DuPont initially refused, but a court order ultimately forced them to turn over what amounted to more than 100,000 pages, some dating back 50 years. 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. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The story started in Parkersburg, West Virginia, home to about 32,000 people and about a three-hour drive due east of Cincinnati. He was speaking to the camcorder pressed to his eye. July 7, 1996 Washington, West Virginia. Then one autumn day in 2000, local schoolteacher Joe Kiger . . 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. Attached to it was a gallbladder that didnt. 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. At fifty-four, Earl was an . 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. GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. It's a story straight out of a legal thriller penned by John Grisham, though instead of the Deep South, this one takes place in Appalachia. 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. Recently, the cows had started charging, trying to kick him and butt him with their heads, as this one had before she died. Calf born dead. Earl loved his cows, and the cows loved Earl. Jim still calls it "the home place," although its windows are now boarded up and the outhouse is crumbling into the field. 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. DuPont did not tell this to the Tennants at the time." Sometimes it ran so dry hed find them glittering dead in the mud. Wilbur Tennant's family farm was located next to a "non-hazardous" landfill operated by the chemical company. It dont do you any good to go to the DNR about it. Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. 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 . Did they think he would just sit by? . . ATSDR/CDC also notes that more studies need to be done in the area of health effects, particularly on shorter-chain substances. And after Bilott watched and listened, he took action. However, the company didn't tell employees or regulators and ended the study, the Huffington Post reports. The problem, he thought, was not what they were eating but what they were drinking. LinkedIn sets this cookie to store performed actions on the website. . . In another field, a grown cow lay dead. He toldThe Intercept in 2015 that it bubbled up out of glass containers and "was everywhere." Now it was filled with specimens you might find in a pathology lab. 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. Whatever had killed this cow appeared to Earl to have eaten her from the inside out. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. 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?" 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. emily in paris savoir office. LinkedIn sets the lidc cookie to facilitate data center selection. A farmer's cows suddenly start dying off. Seventy years later these chemicals are in our soil, our air, in wildlife. 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. How accurately does Dark Waters depict the twists and turns of this maze? 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. He was 7 years old. He zoomed in. This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. No one believed him when he told them about the things he saw happening to his land. 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. 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. See how thats all wallered down? 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 . Wilbur Tennant and his family had recently sold part of their farmland to a company and had no idea what would end up coming of it. 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. 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.). . 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. About 600 are in use today, according to the EPA. DuPont's response was they would settle with the Tennant's however Bilott was . 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 . At fifty-four, Earl was an imposing figure, six feet tall, lean and oxshouldered, with sandpaper hands and a permanent squint. It was different from the regular dead-cow smells he had dealt with all his life. They are everywhere. I dont ever remember seeing that in there before., He cut out the heart and sliced it open. Wilbur Tennant. 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. This cookie is managed by Amazon Web Services and is used for load balancing. And, like many Grisham novels, it's a tale worthy of the big screen. 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. The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. 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. Thunderstorms occasionally swelled the creek so much that he couldnt wade across it. There is about a teacup or so full of itits a real dark yeller. 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. DuPont determined that PFOA passed from pregnant employees to their fetuses. On August 31st of 2017, E. I. Dupont de Nemours Company and the Dow Chemical Company merged as part of a $130 billion merger. This cookie is used for storing country code selected from country selector. Its head was tipped back at an awkward angle. YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. "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. The state vet wouldnt even come out to the farm. The Messed Up True Story Behind Dark Waters, Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia. Bill Pullman was portraying me, and hes taller and younger, and everyone appeared to be drinking. 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. working in the garden and around the farm with his grandson . wilbur tennant farm location. DuPont then really did proceed to turn that plot into a dumping ground for sludge that it knew to be toxic, going so far as to quietly conduct tests for perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, in the nearby river and expressing concern for the health of the Tennants livestock in internal documents nearly a decade before they would be denying culpability and blaming the Tennants in court. Thats the largest gall I ever saw in my life! Birds sang through the white-hot humidity as he panned the camcorder across the creek. This cookie is set by Facebook to display advertisements when either on Facebook or on a digital platform powered by Facebook advertising, after visiting the website. 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. He couldnt quite place it. You notice them dark place there, all down through? 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. The Teflon Toxin, Part 2: Wilbur Tennant vs. DuPontNot Yet Rated. Listen to an interview with Bilott about the chemical lawsuits on Science Friday. In 1973 she [took] him to the cattle farm belonging to the Tennants' neighbors, the Grahams, with whom White was friendly. 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. This cookie is installed by Google Universal Analytics to restrain request rate and thus limit the collection of data on high traffic sites. The first thing Im gonna do is cut this head open, check these teeth.. "Though PFOA was not classified by the government as a hazardous substance, 3M sent DuPont recommendations on how to dispose of it. 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. 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. And I burn them all. And Im gonna cut her open and find out what caused her to die. Tennant had a problem. YSC cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages. He was an excellent marksman, and his family had always had enough meat to eat. Maybe if he filmed it, they could see for themselves and realize he was not just some crazy old farmer. 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. The farmer's name was Wilbur Earl Tennant. 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 least thats what his family had been told thirteen years before by the company that had bought their land. Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected. Anne Hathaway as Sarah Bilott and the real-life Sarah Bilott. Tennant Farm, December 1999, from DuPont Cattle Team Report. 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. 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 knew the folks at the DNR, because they gave him a special permit to hunt on his land out of season. When their attorney, Robert Bilott of Cincinnati, asked the EPA to order DuPont to stop using C8, the company sought a restraining . That calf had died miserable. The other companies named in the lawsuit did not respond to Time's requests for comment. And the man who started it all, Wilbur Tennant, won't see that resolution. 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. 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. (Ammonium perfluorooctanoate or C8) wastes near the farm. Edit Search New Search Filters (1) To get better results, add more information such as Birth Info, Death Info and Locationeven a guess will help. It is cut from the same cloth as movies like 'Erin Brockovich' and 'A Civil Action'. Theres been fifty-six cows thats been burnt just like this.. 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 >>>. That looks a little bit like cancer to me.. Home. are linked to DuPont's landfilling of PFOA. "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. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Used to help protect the website against Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks. Bilott did marry a fellow lawyer, Sarah Barlage, who left her career defending corporations against workers compensation claims to raise their sons. 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. Bilott had now discovered the cause in the deaths of the cattle on Tennant's farm and had called DuPont regarding this information. Because I was feeding her enough feed that she shoulda gained weight instead of losing weight. Dry Run was less than a miles walk from the home place, across Lee Creek, through an open field, and along a pair of tire tracks. LOCATION. 30 Broad Street, Suite 801 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. wilbur tennant farm location . 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. Joseph and Darlene Kiger in Park City, Utah, in 2018. When DuPont settled that lawsuit in 2004, the company agreed to finance a study of PFOAs health effects. Nearly 70,000 people participated. The June 23, 2000, letter listed something in the landfill that didnt appear in the other documents or in Tafts chemical dictionaries. They concluded that 'the study was valid' and that 'the observed fetal eye defects were due to C8,' according to internal DuPont documents. 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. But now it seemed they were ignoring him. The underdog was a farmer whose family worked the land for generations, building it from a small operation to a thriving livelihood. A videotape Tennant shot with a VHS camcorder shows emaciated cows with tumors on their hides. The farmhouse stood at the foot of a sloping meadow that rose into a bald knob. Wilbur Tennant shot this video in the late 1990s on his property in West Virginia. After this sale, Tennant's cattle started to become sick and Tennant began to understand that . . DuPont established a presence along the Ohio River in 1948 with the Washington Works plant near Parkersburg. Earl retired from the WV Department of Highways as an equipment operator. This is the hundred and seventh calf thats met this problem right here. 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. And it takes immense courage and conviction to do that. Earl pulled on white gloves and pried open the cows mouth, probing her gums and teeth. But that's just the start. The spleen was thinner and whiter than any spleen he had come cross. The cookie is a session cookies and is deleted when all the browser windows are closed. Photos by Focus Features and Mike Coppola/Getty Images. He suspected one of his town's largest employers was up to no good, allegedly dumping chemicals and contaminating his farm's water supply, and the result was hundreds of sickened and dead cattle. These emerging contaminants linger, breaking down only when incinerated at very high temperatures. DuPont settled the Tennant case for an undisclosed amount. 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.
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