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. People who didn't know him very well called him Wilbur, but friends and family called him Earl. Born: March 6, 1942 . 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. Tennant was a farmer who sold part of his land in Parkersburg, West Virginia, to DuPont, for Wilbur Tennant vs. DuPont on Vimeo Because I was feeding her enough feed that she shoulda gained weight instead of losing weight. Tennant recounted to anyone who would listen that he'd lost about 100 calves and 50 cows over the years. Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, sold DuPont a 66-acre tract of land that became part of the Dry Run Landfill. Wamsley suffered from ulcerative colitis, a condition that can lead to rectal cancer, which, in his case it, did. He was an excellent marksman, and his family had always had enough meat to eat. 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 . 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. Ken Wamsley spent nearly 40 years working at DuPont Washington Works plant, and some of that time, he measured levels of the chemical C8 (PFOA). Earl had come to believe that its water was now poisonedwith what, he did not know. 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. 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. He didnt believe it anymore. Quite soon after DuPont establishes their landfill, weird things start happening to his cattle. In 2005, the company agreed to fund studies on the health effects of C8. wilbur tennant farm location. . The primary coordinates for Tennants Farm Pond Dam places it within the WV 26184 ZIP Code delivery area. Revelations by another chemical company gave Bilott leverage to go back into court and request more records from DuPont. But that's just the start. SiteLock sets this cookie to provide cloud-based website security services. When their attorney, Robert Bilott of Cincinnati, asked the EPA to order DuPont to stop using C8, the company sought a restraining . Thank you for helping us continue making science fun for everyone. VigLink sets this cookie to track the user behaviour and also limit the ads displayed, in order to ensure relevant advertising. But now it seemed they were ignoring him. 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. These included a polluted river . He knew his neighbors and his community was being poisoned, Bilott told the Post. 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. Bubbles formed as it tumbled over stones in a sudsy film. 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 . It also helps in fraud preventions. DuPont immediately removed all female workers from areas where they might come into contact with the chemical.". Not even buzzards and scavengers would eat them. 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. After this sale, Tennant's cattle started to become sick and Tennant began to understand that . He had stopped feeding his family venison from the deer he shot on his land. LinkedIn sets the lidc cookie to facilitate data center selection. It flowed through a corner of the three-hundred-acre farm, in a place Earl called the holler. A small valley cut between hillsides, the holler was where he moved the herd to graze throughout the summer. His earlier efforts had all revealed unpleasant surprises: tumors, abnormal organs, unnatural smells. PFAS are ubiquitous. The carcasses lay where they fell. C8 is a "surfactant," a chemical compound that reduces surface tension. 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 . 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. June 14, 2022; salem witch trials podcast lore The calf was engulfed in a black, humming mist. Maybe if he filmed it, they could see for themselves and realize he was not just some crazy old farmer. 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. DuPont responds with a study of the Tennant farm conducted with the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A) that . Their innards smelled funny and were sometimes riddled with what looked to him like tumors. On the other side of his property line, Dry Run Landfill was filling up the little valley that had once belonged to his family. 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.). As a man, he had walked its banks with his wife. 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. A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. Attached to it was a gallbladder that didnt. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Published by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. The farm spread roughly 600 acres, and had a total of 200 cattle roaming around. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". Thats the water right there, underneath that foam, the farmer said. VigLink sets this cookie to show users relevant advertisements and also limit the number of adverts that are shown to them. The cows grazed on a mixed pasture of white Dutch clover, bluegrass, fescue, red clover . Cows that drank from the creek had been healthy. . LinkedIn sets this cookie to remember a user's language setting. Something was killing cattle on his West Virginia farm, but no one wanted to help him prove that frothy, green-colored water coming from a neighboring property . 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. How accurately does Dark Waters depict the twists and turns of this maze? PFOA and PFOS are among more than 9,000 versions of synthetic chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS. The use of these cookies is strictly limited to measuring the site's audience. And Im gonna cut her open and find out what caused her to die. "I've been dealing with this for . 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. And the man who started it all, Wilbur Tennant, won't see that resolution. 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 . 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. Thats where theyre supposed to come down here and pull water samples, to see whats in that water. He pointed the camera at a stagnant pool of water flanked by knee-high grass. Company officials told one of Tennants brothers in person and in writing they planned to turn it into a landfill for office garbage nothing hazardous. . And if it weren't for one West Virginia farmer, Wilbur Tennant, we still might not know much about them. But two years before 3M announced its phaseout in 2000, the company informed EPA officials for the first time that PFOA and PFOS accumulate in human blood, take years to leave the body and dont break down in the environment. Its dumping pits were unlined, designed for the disposal of nonhazardous wasteoffice paper and everyday trash. You notice them dark place there, all down through? 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. There is something wrong with this water, Tennant says on the videotape. (Chicago Tribune Handout). Bilott is seeking class-action status in the case against several companies, including 3M and Chemours. In March, a federal judge limited the case to Ohio residents with a specific amount of the chemicals in their blood, which alone could include up to 11 million people. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. In November 2019, the Washington Post hosted a podcast with Mark Ruffalo and Robert Bilott to discuss the film and the lawsuit. And after Bilott watched and listened, he took action. Maps, Driving Directions & Local Area Information In the flames, a calf lay broadside, burning. 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? These cookies help provide anonymized information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Did they think no one would notice? 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 company told the family that they wanted to use the land to . 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. The June 23, 2000, letter listed something in the landfill that didnt appear in the other documents or in Tafts chemical dictionaries. It is based on a shocking true story, where a series . The sp_landing is set by Spotify to implement audio content from Spotify on the website and also registers information on user interaction related to the audio content. Somebodys not doing their duty, he said to the camera, to anyone who would listen. 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. Wilbur's brother, Jim, was also . "In 1991, DuPont scientists determined an internal safety limit for PFOA concentration in drinking water: one part per billion. Eight years later 3M paused one of its animal studies after every monkey fed PFOS died. death of 260 cattle in West Virginia. I fed her at least a gallon of grain a day. He was 7 years old. I dont ever remember seeing that in there before., He cut out the heart and sliced it open. Sure, bitters make cocktails taste great. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Photo illustration by Slate. Cookie used to remember the user's Disqus login credentials across websites that use Disqus. YSC cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages. 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. "As soon as you cut the skin loose, you get some of the foulest smells you've ever smelled," Jim Tennant told the Huffington Post. DuPont bought 66 acres of the Tennant's farm land from Wilbur Tennant's brother Jim and his wife Della [1]. About 600 are in use today, according to the EPA. 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. The Post read a statement from DuPont that reiterated the company's commitment to health and safety and protecting the environment: "Although DuPont does not make the chemicals in question, we have announced a series of commitments around our limited use of PFAS and are leading [the] industry in supporting federal legislation and science-based regulatory efforts to address these chemicals." As luck would have it, the company bought 66 acres from one of their employees, Wilbur Tennant. 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. They just turn their back and walk on, he told the camera. The company turned this land into the unlined Dry Run Landfill. It was contaminated with high levels of PFOA. His mothers grandfather had bought this land, and it was the only home he had ever known. He hardly ever saw minnows swimming in the creek anymore, except the ones that floated belly up. are linked to DuPont's landfilling of PFOA. Tennant and his brother Jim wanted to get to the bottom of it, so they dissected some carcasses. This cookie is used to detect and defend when a client attempt to replay a cookie.This cookie manages the interaction with online bots and takes the appropriate actions. Thunderstorms occasionally swelled the creek so much that he couldnt wade across it. 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. "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.". 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 substance is stable, persistent, and very difficult to break down.
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