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In 2000, Bilott found notations on an internal DuPont document that referred to a chemical called perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), also known as C8, in Dry Run Creek. Nor was it on the list of substances regulated by the EPA. 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?" . 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. This cow died about twenty, thirty minutes ago, Earl said. "If that's what it takes to get people the information they need and to protect people, we're willing to do it.". Wilbur Tennant and his wife, Sandra, won a legal settlement from DuPont two years ago after they accused the company of sickening their family and killing their cattle by dumping C8 into a landfill near their farm. 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. I dont understand them great big dark red places across there. Even though he sold them to be finished and slaughtered for beef, he didnt have the heart to kill one himself, unless it had a broken leg and he needed to end its suffering. . Issued by Microsoft's ASP.NET Application, this cookie stores session data during a user's website visit. None of this information was shared with the public. DuPont named this sight Dry Run Landfill after the creek that ran onto the Tennant farm. 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.. Even down near the tips of it. But now it seemed they were ignoring him. . 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. A corporate courtroom drama typically doesn't need extensive visual effects, but "Dark Waters" had a few key moments that could not be created practically. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Used by Yahoo to provide ads, content or analytics. It was to be incinerated or sent to chemical-waste facilities. DuPont detected PFOA in the drinking water of communities near the Teflon plant. 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. 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. One person can't always cause a change, but one person can set off a chain of reactions to cause change. He had stopped feeding his family venison from the deer he shot on his land. It contained an extraordinarily high concentration of PFOA. 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. Bilott later determined it was one of the forever chemicals perfluorooctanoic acid, commonly referred to today as PFOA. His mothers grandfather had bought this land, and it was the only home he had ever known. Just months before Rob Bilott made partner at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, he received a call on his direct line from a cattle farmer. Tennant stated that . He walked there every day to count heads and check fences. The Messed Up True Story Behind Dark Waters, Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia. In the 1980s, Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, got an offer from DuPont. Sure, bitters make cocktails taste great. Earl pulled on white gloves and pried open the cows mouth, probing her gums and teeth. Behind him, white-faced Herefords grazed in rolling meadows. At 72, Jim is so slight that he nearly . 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 . The first thing Im gonna do is cut this head open, check these teeth.. Did they think he would just sit by? 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. 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 a father, he had watched his little girls splash around in its shallow ripples. 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. Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie is used to record the user consent for the cookies in the "Advertisement" category . 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. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. 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. The West Virginia-based . Tennant's farm is close to a newly DuPont-owned landfill. The cookie does not store any personally identifiable data. In May 2015, a consortium of scientists across many disciplines released a document called the Madrid Statement. This cookie is used for load balancing purposes. 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. Something is the matter right there. This is the hundred and seventh calf thats met this problem right here. Lawyers in Parkersburg, West Virginia, turned him down when he urged them to sue DuPont, then one of areas biggest employers. 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. Hard labor was his birthright. "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. July 7, 1996 Washington, West Virginia. Sometimes it ran so dry hed find them glittering dead in the mud. 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. But you just give me time. W. Earl Tennant Wilbur Earl Tennant, 67 of New England passed away suddenly at his residence May 15, 2009. . It kicked and thumped and wallered around there like you wouldnt believe.. Predictably, his complaints to government went ignored. 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. And theyre going to find out one of these days that somebodys tired of it.. Forever chemicals found in drinking water throughout Illinois: Search the database >>>. At the end of the movie, I had a revelation. 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. Tennant and his brother Jim wanted to get to the bottom of it, so they dissected some carcasses. Wilbur Earl Tennant, 67 of New England passed away suddenly at his residence May 15, 2009. He died of cancer in 2009. Earl retired from the WV Department of Highways as an equipment operator. riding horses, milking cows and watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown on TV. He especially enjoyed hunting, working in the garden and around the farm with his grandson Josh and . These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. 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. The state vet wouldnt even come out to the farm. 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. 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. Photo illustration by Slate. When their attorney, Robert Bilott of Cincinnati, asked the EPA to order DuPont to stop using C8, the company sought a restraining . He owned 200 cows that grazed on 600 acres. The Tennants had sold some of their property to DuPont years earlier. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. 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. The problem, he thought, was not what they were eating but what they were drinking. That things about . 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. 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. "Though PFOA was not classified by the government as a hazardous substance, 3M sent DuPont recommendations on how to dispose of it. At fifty-four, Earl was an imposing figure, six feet tall, lean and oxshouldered, with sandpaper hands and a permanent squint. In 1970, a company that purchased 3Ms PFOS-based firefighting foam abruptly halted a demonstration after it killed fish in a nearby stream. The visit to the Grahams' farm was one of his happiest childhood memories. Anyone could see that something was terribly wrong, not only with the landfill itself but with the agencies responsible for monitoring it. But a single letter, sent by a DuPont scientist to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, began unraveling a more alarming story. 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. R ob Bilott, a corporate lawyer-turned-environmental crusader, doesn't much care if he's made enemies over the years. 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. Its surface was matte with a crusty film that wrinkled against the shore. The muscle looked fine, but a thin, yellow liquid gathered in the cavity where it once beat. The chemical companies are appealing the decision. Alternatives for PFOA and PFOS promoted as safe by industry are just as dangerous, if not more so, scientists are finding. 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. It is based on a shocking true story, where a series . According to the book, DuPont had commissioned a photographer to take aerial photos of the property as part of its defense. There is about a teacup or so full of itits a real dark yeller. The company turned this land into the unlined Dry Run Landfill. 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. 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. 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 . On paper, Rob Bilott didnt appear to be one of those crusading lawyers in legal thrillers. Twitter sets this cookie to integrate and share features for social media and also store information about how the user uses the website, for tracking and targeting. In his research, Bilott had come across a DuPont letter that referred to a chemical known as . . 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. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. Washington, West Virginia. PFOA is part of a larger class of PFAS chemicals. They had seven cows then. Thats the water right there, underneath that foam, the farmer said. death of 260 cattle in West Virginia. Because I was feeding her enough feed that she shoulda gained weight instead of losing weight. Ill do something about it.. 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. The Teflon Toxin, Part 2: Wilbur Tennant vs. DuPont. The cows grazed on a mixed pasture of white Dutch clover, bluegrass, fescue, red clover . No one believed him when he told them about the things he saw happening to his land. This cookie is set by the provider Akamai Bot Manager. The TiPMix cookie is set by Azure to determine which web server the users must be directed to. Where they should have been smooth, they looked ropy, covered with ridges. 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. A farmer's cows suddenly start dying off. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. 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. He had carried a rifle as he went about the farm, always ready to shoot dinner. Its just like that other calf up yonder, he said, panning over the matted grass. 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. 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. See how thats all wallered down? DuPont's scientists understood that the landfill drained into the Tennants' remaining property, and they tested the water in Dry Run Creek. This cookie is managed by Amazon Web Services and is used for load balancing. Behind him, white-faced Herefords grazed in . A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. The olive green water had a greenish brown foam encrusting the grassy bank. He toldThe Intercept in 2015 that it bubbled up out of glass containers and "was everywhere." The Tennants were initially reluctant, especially because of its intended use, but DuPont promised it would house only nonhazardous waste, like scrap metal and ash, according to the Huffington Post. 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 . "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.". 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. Wilbur Tennant shot this video in the late 1990s on his property in West Virginia. Azure sets this cookie for routing production traffic by specifying the production slot. It dont do you any good to go to the DNR about it. They just turn their back and walk on. Bilott created a timeline that showed what DuPont and 3M knew about the chemicals. People who didn't know him very well called him Wilbur, but friends and family called him Earl. His name is Wilbur Tennant. 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 . Did they think no one would notice? DuPont bought C8 from 3M and used it to prevent Teflon from clumping during the manufacturing process. We lurched down a rutted dirt road past the old clapboard farmhouse where he grew up. 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. 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. Dont understand that at all. And I burn them all. 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. Tennants Farm Pond Dam, Wood County, West Virginia. Wamsley suffered from ulcerative colitis, a condition that can lead to rectal cancer, which, in his case it, did. Given the fact that the events depicted on the Tennant cattle farm in Parkersburg, West Virginia, are Dark Waters' most important evidence, the filmmakers should have treated them with the utmost authenticity - to their credit, they did for the most part.Wilbur Tennant's brother Jim really was a DuPont employee who got sick with a disease the doctors couldn't diagnose; and the chemical . 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. VigLink sets this cookie to track the user behaviour and also limit the ads displayed, in order to ensure relevant advertising. 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. SiteLock sets this cookie to provide cloud-based website security services. I noticed that in at least one of the scenes where I was portrayed. (Maddie McGarvey/for the Washington Post). Wilbur's brother, Jim, was also . One tooth had an abscess so large he reckoned he could stick an ice pick clear under it. It wasnt just his cattle dying. 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.. However, the company didn't tell employees or regulators and ended the study, the Huffington Post reports. Now, he was feeding them twice as much and watching them waste away. And the money came in handy, too, since Jim, a Washington Works employee, had for years suffered from flu-like symptoms and illnesses that baffled doctors, as outlined in a Delaware Online article from 2016. Late in the film, a disillusioned Bilott (Mark Ruffalo), up against a wall, imagines that the multinational corporation, the likes of which he once defended, might be setting him up to be a cautionary tale for all their would-be litigants: Look, everybody, even he cant crack the maze, Bilott says, and hes helped build it.. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. Call him, they suggested. Shes poor as a whippoorwill. 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. "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. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Sometimes the cattle watered at a spring-fed bathtub trough at the farthest end of the field, but mostly they drank from Dry Run. 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. He knew his neighbors and his community was being poisoned, Bilott told the Post. The cattle farmer stood at the edge of a creek that cut through a sun-dappled hollow. Tennant wants to sue chemical giant . His cattle were dying inexplicably, and in droves. 'Dark Waters' is an upcoming American legal thriller helmed by Todd Haynes. Bilott is seeking class-action status in the case against several companies, including 3M and Chemours. A downstate Illinois native, Hawthorne joined the Tribune in 2004 after covering the environment and state government in Ohio, Illinois and Florida. Yes, DuPont is still in business, although it has struggled slightly to survive independently from time to time due to its poor public reputation. This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. In the 1990s Wilbur began to notice weird deformities in his cows and some of them were even dying. 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). Deer, birds, fish and other wildlife were turning up dead in and around Dry Run. In April 2000, after 3M conducted tests and studies on a similar, sister chemical to C8 (PFOA) called PFOS, the company notified the Environmental Protection Agency it found that "even modest exposure could have devastating health effects" and started to phase out PFOS use, as well as PFOA, according to the Huffington Post. They just turn their back and walk on, he told the camera. Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyers Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont. The Teflon Toxin, Part 2: Wilbur Tennant vs. DuPontNot Yet Rated. Then, in 1998 Bilott received a phone call from Wilbur Tennant who lived on his farm in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Attorney Rob Bilott discusses the Fight Forever Chemicals campaign on Nov. 19, 2019. A variation of the _gat cookie set by Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to allow website owners to track visitor behaviour and measure site performance. Tennant Farm, December 1999, from DuPont Cattle Team Report. The Devil We Know: Directed by Stephanie Soechtig, Jeremy Seifert. Somebodys not doing their duty, he said to the camera, to anyone who would listen.

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