November 25, 2019 12:03 PM EST. Calf born dead. Earl loved his cows, and the cows loved Earl. 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 . And if it weren't for one West Virginia farmer, Wilbur Tennant, we still might not know much about them. At least thats what his family had been told thirteen years before by the company that had bought their land. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. The flies hummed as loud as bees. Sometimes it ran so dry hed find them glittering dead in the mud. The spleen was thinner and whiter than any spleen he had come cross. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. 3M and DuPont have argued in court and in public statements that neither chemical is harmful to people at typical levels of exposure. Hard labor was his birthright. There is something wrong with this water, Tennant says on the videotape. . 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. We lurched down a rutted dirt road past the old clapboard farmhouse where he grew up. Ill do something about it.. 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. Now it looked like dirty dishwater. Shes poor as a whippoorwill. Joseph and Darlene Kiger in Park City, Utah, in 2018. It kicked and thumped and wallered around there like you wouldnt believe.. "In 1991, DuPont scientists determined an internal safety limit for PFOA concentration in drinking water: one part per billion. oh, two-thirds bigger than it should be., The kidneys, too, looked abnormal. "I've been dealing with this for . PFOA and PFOS are among more than 9,000 versions of synthetic chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS. Cows that drank from the creek had been healthy. . In 1999, a farm farmily sued DuPont for the death of their cattle and the ill health of exposed family and farm workers. But you just give me time. All rights reserved. They just turn their back and walk on, he told the camera. The farmers name was Wilbur Earl Tennant. There also are related substances called precursors that transform into PFOA and PFOS in the body or the environment. R ob Bilott, a corporate lawyer-turned-environmental crusader, doesn't much care if he's made enemies over the years. 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. Edit your search or learn more. 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. Bilott had now discovered the cause in the deaths of the cattle on Tennant's farm and had called DuPont regarding this information. Wilbur Tennant passed away on May 15, 2009 at the age of 67 in Washington, West Virginia. Tennant was a farmer who sold part of his land in Parkersburg, West Virginia, to DuPont, for Wilbur Tennant vs. DuPont on Vimeo izuku has a rare quirk fanfiction; novello olive oil trader joe's; micah mcfadden parents; qatar airways 787 9 business class; mary holland married; spontaneous novel ending explained Seventy years later these chemicals are in our soil, our air, in wildlife. These included a polluted river . 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." Bilott later determined it was one of the forever chemicals perfluorooctanoic acid, commonly referred to today as PFOA. Call him, they suggested. Around here, that economic engine was DuPont, known for innovations like nylon, Tyvek, and Teflon. That looks a little bit like cancer to me.. They had seven cows then. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. New York, NY 10004. Wilbur Earl Tennant and his siblings took over the land when their father abandoned them in the 1950s, according to the Huffington Post. He was 7 years old. Tennant stated that . The Messed Up True Story Behind Dark Waters, Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia. But the point I want to make, and make it real clear, he said, zooming in, thats the mouth of Dry Run.. As luck would have it, the company bought 66 acres from one of their employees, Wilbur Tennant. 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.). Recently, the cows had started charging, trying to kick him and butt him with their heads, as this one had before she died. In 2005, the company agreed to fund studies on the health effects of C8. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. According to the New York Times Magazine, "By 1990, DuPont had dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA sludge into Dry Run Landfill. 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 . C8 is a "surfactant," a chemical compound that reduces surface tension. Now, he was feeding them twice as much and watching them waste away. Her eyes were sunk deep in her head. . Then, in 1998 Bilott received a phone call from Wilbur Tennant who lived on his farm in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Somebodys not doing their duty, he said to the camera, to anyone who would listen. 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. 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. Tennant was a West Virginia farmer whose family owned land near a DuPont factory on the Ohio River where the chemical giant made one of its signature inventions: Teflon nonstick and anti-stain coatings used in carpets, clothing, cookware and hundreds of other products. The use of these cookies is strictly limited to measuring the site's audience. Join Facebook to connect with Wilbur Tennant and others you may know. And if it sounds familiar, it should. 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. 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. He was born at New England, a son of the late Blaine Tennant and Lydia (Wildman) Tennant. LinkedIn sets the lidc cookie to facilitate data center selection. He died of cancer in 2009; he was 67. His mothers grandfather had bought this land, and it was the only home he had ever known. Its just like that other calf up yonder, he said, panning over the matted grass. 'Dark Waters' is an upcoming American legal thriller helmed by Todd Haynes. In the 1990s Wilbur began to notice weird deformities in his cows and some of them were even dying. 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. And theyre going to find out one of these days that somebodys tired of it.. How would you like for your livestock to have to drink something like that? he asked his imagined audience. (Chicago Tribune Handout). This cow died about twenty, thirty minutes ago, Earl said. By that point, 153 animals died had died grisly deaths on his property . wilbur tennant farm location . DuPont and the family settled the lawsuit soon after Bilott shared that information with one of the companys lawyers, who had referred to PFOA in an email as the material 3M sells us that we poop into the river and into drinking water.. As a boy, he had cooled his bare feet in this creek. They're in virtually everything we use, including stain-resistant fabric and carpets, nonstick cookware, water-repellent clothing, and firefighting foam. Photos by Focus Features and EPK. 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. GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. Isnt that lovely?. The calf was engulfed in a black, humming mist. As one of Bilotts colleagues told the New York Times, To say that Rob Bilott is understated is an understatement. Its also true that Bilott did not have the same Ivy League pedigree of many of his colleagues at Taft, having been raised on Air Force bases across the continental United States and West Germany, and it was through these working-class connections that he was introduced to the Tennant family farm case. 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. (Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call). 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. Ill do something about it.. It looked, at most, a few days old. The goal of the merger was to combine two businesses that dabbled in . 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. Patches of missing hair, discolorations in their . At 72, Jim is so slight that he nearly . Theres been fifty-six cows thats been burnt just like this.. "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 Earl Tennant, 67 of New England passed away suddenly at his residence May 15, 2009. People who didn't know him very well called him Wilbur, but friends and family called him Earl. a series of Camcorder videos showing "soapy froth" in a creek running through DuPont's landfill property and into Tennant's farm. Revelations by another chemical company gave Bilott leverage to go back into court and request more records from DuPont. He marked each one on a calendar, a simple slash mark for each grotesque death. The Intercept notes that the legal process "uncovered hundreds of internal communications revealing that DuPont employees for many years suspected that C8 was harmful and yet continued to use it, putting the company's workers and the people who lived near its plants at risk.". DuPont responds with a study of the Tennant farm conducted with the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A) that . VigLink sets this cookie to track the user behaviour and also limit the ads displayed, in order to ensure relevant advertising. As a father, he had watched his little girls splash around in its shallow ripples. Thats the largest gall I ever saw in my life! 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. As a man, he had walked its banks with his wife. DuPont later paid more than $750 million to settle lawsuits filed by Teflon plant neighbors with PFOA-linked diseases, including testicular and kidney cancer, high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease and pregnancy-induced hypertension. Sue Bailey was pregnant when she worked in the Teflon division of the plant. He had stopped feeding his family venison from the deer he shot on his land. Thats whats so scary about these chemicals, said Jamie DeWitt, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at East Carolina University who studies PFAS. Thank you for helping us continue making science fun for everyone. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. She had spent the summer in the hollow, drinking out of Dry Run until shed started to act strangely. 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. Yes, DuPont is still in business, although it has struggled slightly to survive independently from time to time due to its poor public reputation. And after Bilott watched and listened, he took action. Born: March 6, 1942 . 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). Used by Yahoo to provide ads, content or analytics. (He later would be played by actor Mark Ruffalo in the 2019 film Dark Waters.). The JSESSIONID cookie is used by New Relic to store a session identifier so that New Relic can monitor session counts for an application. The farm would have stretched even longer if one of Wilbur Tennant's brothers, Jim, did not sell 66 acres to the DuPont company in the early 1980's for a landfill they were going to create for their factory. During manufacturing processes, PFAS chemicals are released into the air, soil, and water around industrial facilities, the EPA reports. 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. 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. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. "Though PFOA was not classified by the government as a hazardous substance, 3M sent DuPont recommendations on how to dispose of it. 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. He knew his neighbors and his community was being poisoned, Bilott told the Post. 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. 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. His hand shook as he pressed the zoom button, zeroing in on a stagnant pool. 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 . Science Friday is produced by the Science Friday Initiative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. On paper, Rob Bilott didnt appear to be one of those crusading lawyers in legal thrillers. . A creek connects the landfill and the fields of Tennant's farm. Wilbur Tennant is on Facebook. Photo illustration by Slate. A downstate Illinois native, Hawthorne joined the Tribune in 2004 after covering the environment and state government in Ohio, Illinois and Florida. 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. Predictably, his complaints to government went ignored. 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. Invest in quality science journalism by making a donation to Science Friday. apples, bread, green beans and ground beef. He panned the camera a few degrees. '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. 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 . 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. He toldThe Intercept in 2015 that it bubbled up out of glass containers and "was everywhere." Tennants Farm Pond Dam, Wood County, West Virginia. 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. W. Earl Tennant Wilbur Earl Tennant, 67 of New England passed away suddenly at his residence May 15, 2009. . . Photos by Focus Features and Mike Coppola/Getty Images. Used to help protect the website against Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks. Bilott is seeking class-action status in the case against several companies, including 3M and Chemours. Wilbur's brother, Jim, was also . Standing walleyed in an open field was a polled Hereford red with a white face and floppy ears. DuPont settled the Tennant case for an undisclosed amount. He zoomed out and panned over to an industrial pipe spewing froth into the creek. 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. Two weeks after he filmed the foamy water, Earl aimed the camcorder at one of his cows. 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.. It is cut from the same cloth as movies like 'Erin Brockovich' and 'A Civil Action'. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. In his research, Bilott had come across a DuPont letter that referred to a chemical known as . You notice them dark place there, all down through? The farmhouse stood at the foot of a sloping meadow that rose into a bald knob. Dry Run used to flow gin clear. The state vet wouldnt even come out to the farm. 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 . Thing was, time was running out. Because I was feeding her enough feed that she shoulda gained weight instead of losing weight. Behind him, white-faced Herefords grazed in . Jim still calls it "the home place," although its windows are now boarded up and the outhouse is crumbling into the field. Wilbur Tennant's 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 family's 600-some . And Im gonna cut her open and find out what caused her to die. This cookie is used for storing country code selected from country selector. Wilbur Tennant. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. It is based on a shocking true story, where a series . It wasnt his first. 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 visit to the Grahams' farm was one of his happiest childhood memories. Attorney Rob Bilott discusses the Fight Forever Chemicals campaign on Nov. 19, 2019. The herd that had once been nearly three hundred head had dwindled to just about half that. He hardly ever saw minnows swimming in the creek anymore, except the ones that floated belly up. 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. At the end of the movie, I had a revelation. 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. With no one from the government or even local veterinarians willing to do it, Earl decided to do an autopsy himself. 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. Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected. 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. LinkedIn sets this cookie to remember a user's language setting. He sliced open the chest cavity, pulled out a lung, and turned the camera back on. 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.. 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.. Wilbur Earl Tennant. This cookie is installed by Google Universal Analytics to restrain request rate and thus limit the collection of data on high traffic sites. For example, New Hampshire sued 3M and DuPont, along with a handful of companies that make firefighting foam containing PFAS. He especially enjoyed hunting, working in the garden and around the farm with his grandson Josh and . The cattle farmer stood at the edge of a creek that cut through a sun-dappled hollow. In the meantime, people are drinking these chemicals every day. 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. Maps, Driving Directions & Local Area Information It wasnt just his cattle dying. The pipe flowed out of a collection pond at the low end of a landfill. 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. death of 260 cattle in West Virginia. Bryan Schutmaat for The New York Times. They would nuzzle him as he scratched their heads. . (Maddie McGarvey/for the Washington Post). I noticed that in at least one of the scenes where I was portrayed. A farmer's cows suddenly start dying off. 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. His name is Wilbur Tennant. Initial data showed evidence that it did. Bill Pullman was portraying me, and hes taller and younger, and everyone appeared to be drinking. But friends knew the grandson of one of their neighbors had become an environmental lawyer in Cincinnati. DuPont determined that PFOA passed from pregnant employees to their fetuses. Home. His cattle now drank from its pools. His pleas for help fell on deaf ears, according to the Huffington Post's article, "Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia." July 7, 1996 Washington, West Virginia. The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. The stream looked like many other streams that flowed through his sprawling farm. Nothing jumped out in page after page he reviewed, Bilott recalled. 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. 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. In 1998, corporate lawyer Robert Bilott ( Mark Ruffalo) is approached by Wilbur Tennant ( Bill Camp) a farmer from his hometown of Parkersburg, West Virginia. 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. The farmer Wilbur Tennant had suspected that the chemical company DuPont was responsible for the death of many of his cows. 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. . Tennant recounted to anyone who would listen that he'd lost about 100 calves and 50 cows over the years. Bilott created a timeline that showed what DuPont and 3M knew about the chemicals. 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. GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. 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. He panned again: a bonfire on a grassy slope, a pyre of logs as fat as garbage cans. Tennant didnt live to witness the scope of what unfolded after he persuaded Bilott to file the lawsuit about his dead cows. 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. 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. LinkedIn sets this cookie for LinkedIn Ads ID syncing. 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. du Pont de Nemours and Co, better known as DuPont, on behalf of a West Virginia farmer whose cows were dying. 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. But what about the alarming moment when a fire breaks out at the home of Joseph Kigers father, who shares his name? When DuPont settled that lawsuit in 2004, the company agreed to finance a study of PFOAs health effects. Next door to Tennant's farm was a landfill owned by E.I. . The underdog was a farmer whose family worked the land for generations, building it from a small operation to a thriving livelihood.

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