The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser ID. It is based on a shocking true story, where a series . 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. In the 1980s, Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, got an offer from DuPont. Jim still calls it "the home place," although its windows are now boarded up and the outhouse is crumbling into the field. du Pont de Nemours and Co, better known as DuPont, on behalf of a West Virginia farmer whose cows were dying. Bilott had now discovered the cause in the deaths of the cattle on Tennant's farm and had called DuPont regarding this information. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. We'll assume you're okay with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Isnt that lovely?. 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. 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. YSC cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages. Bilott found studies that potentially linked PFOA with a variety of cancers, birth defects, and illnesses. The cookie is used to store and identify a users' unique session ID for the purpose of managing user session on the website. Two weeks after he filmed the foamy water, Earl aimed the camcorder at one of his cows. Wilbur Earl Tennant. They just turn their back and walk on, he told the camera. On the other side of his property line, Dry Run Landfill was filling up the little valley that had once belonged to his family. 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. And, based on Centers for Disease Control data, PFAS chemicals were found the blood of 98 percent of people studied. 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. The suit alleges negligence claiming the chemicals contaminated the state's natural resources, according to New Hampshire Public Radio. In 1998, corporate lawyer Robert Bilott ( Mark Ruffalo) is approached by Wilbur Tennant ( Bill Camp) a farmer from his hometown of Parkersburg, West Virginia. On August 31st of 2017, E. I. Dupont de Nemours Company and the Dow Chemical Company merged as part of a $130 billion merger. But a single letter, sent by a DuPont scientist to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, began unraveling a more alarming story. 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 . About 600 are in use today, according to the EPA. 3M and DuPont have argued in court and in public statements that neither chemical is harmful to people at typical levels of exposure. 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. LinkedIn sets the lidc cookie to facilitate data center selection. 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. And theyre going to find out one of these days that somebodys tired of it.. For decades it had been the backbone of 3Ms Scotchgard brand of stain-resistant products. 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. SiteLock sets this cookie to provide cloud-based website security services. DuPont's response was they would settle with the Tennant's however Bilott was . 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. Forever chemicals found in drinking water throughout Illinois: Search the database >>>. But what about the alarming moment when a fire breaks out at the home of Joseph Kigers father, who shares his name? 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 . It's the messy, real story behind Focus Features' Dark Waters movie, starring Mark Ruffalo as Robert Bilott, the corporate lawyer turned environmental activist who led an epic legal fight against chemical titan DuPont. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. Tennant Farm, December 1999, from DuPont Cattle Team Report. In 1973 she [took] him to the cattle farm belonging to the Tennants' neighbors, the Grahams, with whom White was friendly. Thunderstorms occasionally swelled the creek so much that he couldnt wade across it. At 72, Jim is so slight that he nearly . They're in virtually everything we use, including stain-resistant fabric and carpets, nonstick cookware, water-repellent clothing, and firefighting foam. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through 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. Something is the matter right there. He requested all documents that DuPont had related to PFOA. 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. Class Action - Part 1. The C8 Science Study (named for DuPonts internal code for PFOA) found a probable link between the chemical and certain diseases in humans, some of which 3M and DuPont had found in animals years, if not decades, earlier. These included a polluted river . Wilbur Tennant shot this video on his property between 1995 and 1997. At the end of the movie, I had a revelation. 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. 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. 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 >>>. Now, he was feeding them twice as much and watching them waste away. Next door to Tennant's farm was a landfill owned by E.I. Bilott is seeking class-action status in the case against several companies, including 3M and Chemours. LinkedIn sets this cookie for LinkedIn Ads ID syncing. But you just give me time. In the 1990s Wilbur began to notice weird deformities in his cows and some of them were even dying. At fifty-four, Earl was an imposing figure, six feet tall, lean and oxshouldered, with sandpaper hands and a permanent squint. They had seven cows then. 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 Earl had sought help, but no one would step up. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". 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. 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. 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. But now it seemed they were ignoring him. He toldThe Intercept in 2015 that it bubbled up out of glass containers and "was everywhere." A key component of Teflon was C8, also known as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). "If that's what it takes to get people the information they need and to protect people, we're willing to do it.". The carcass was starting to smell. The cattle farmer stood at the edge of a creek that cut through a sun-dappled hollow. Bilotts law firm, Taft Stettinius & Hollister, typically represents corporate clients like DuPont in environmental cases, not people like Tennant. June 14, 2022. According to the New York Times Magazine, "By 1990, DuPont had dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA sludge into Dry Run Landfill. Yet to this day the companies deny responsibility, Bilott said in an interview. All rights reserved. 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. He made for an imposing figure at six feet tall, lean and broad shouldered, his . That things about . 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. Wilbur Tennant's family farm was located next to a "non-hazardous" landfill operated by the chemical company. Attached to it was a gallbladder that didnt. A few years after the sale, Tennant suspected DuPont had filled the landfill with more than just garbage. . 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. 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 . Tennant told him that DuPont had bought land from his family that was adjacent to his farm, for what the company had assured him would be a non-hazardous landfill, according to a letter Bilott later filed with the Environmental Protection Agency. Hard labor was his birthright. 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. 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. As luck would have it, the company bought 66 acres from one of their employees, Wilbur Tennant. GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. Bilott's connection to Parkersburg dated back to his childhood, when he spent summers there visiting his grandmother, and her friend is the one who suggested to Wilbur Tennant that he call Bilott, an environmental lawyer at Cincinnati firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister, for help. 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). So, the couple sold about 60 acres to DuPont. This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. 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. Anne Hathaway as Sarah Bilott and the real-life Sarah Bilott. He panned again: a bonfire on a grassy slope, a pyre of logs as fat as garbage cans. 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. The same year, DuPont found that water in one local district contained PFOA levels at three times that figure. 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. Join Facebook to connect with Wilbur Tennant and others you may know. The company told the family that they wanted to use the land to . DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia.