Born: March 6, 1942 . Persistent farmer whose cows died from a mysterious disease helped Theres been fifty-six cows thats been burnt just like this.. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". He was an excellent marksman, and his family had always had enough meat to eat. He was born at New England, a son of the late Blaine Tennant and Lydia (Wildman) Tennant. As Bilott details in Exposure, the April 23, 2001, incident was eventually confirmed between his legal team and DuPonts. 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. Maps, Driving Directions & Local Area Information That day had never come, so he decided he would make them watch a video. Anyone could see that something was terribly wrong, not only with the landfill itself but with the agencies responsible for monitoring it. Thats the water right there, underneath that foam, the farmer said. Shes poor as a whippoorwill. In the 1980s, Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, got an offer from DuPont. 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. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. 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. 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 . How Accurate Is Dark Waters? - Looper.com The use of these cookies is strictly limited to measuring the site's audience. The cookie is a session cookies and is deleted when all the browser windows are closed. LinkedIn sets this cookie to remember a user's language setting. As unbelievable as it may sound, DuPont really did, in the 1960s, offer some of its staff Teflon-laced cigarettes as a human experiment into the potential side effects of the PFOA-produced nonstick material, as the movie recounts. 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. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. Farmer Wilbur Earl Tennant's historic video showing mysterious cow Bill Pullman was portraying me, and hes taller and younger, and everyone appeared to be drinking. Wilbur Earl Tennant and his siblings took over the land when their father abandoned them in the 1950s, according to the Huffington Post. 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.". 'Dark Waters' is an upcoming American legal thriller helmed by Todd Haynes. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. During manufacturing processes, PFAS chemicals are released into the air, soil, and water around industrial facilities, the EPA reports. The farmers name was Wilbur Earl Tennant. LOCATION. Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, sold DuPont a 66-acre tract of land that became part of the Dry Run Landfill. But a single letter, sent by a DuPont scientist to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, began unraveling a more alarming story. The Devil We Know: Directed by Stephanie Soechtig, Jeremy Seifert. 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. 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. 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. In 2005, the company agreed to fund studies on the health effects of C8. wilbur tennant farm location. Earl retired from the WV Department of Highways as an equipment operator. I dont understand them great big dark red places across there. But you just give me time. 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. The smell was odd. The EPA on its own only recently started to take steps to study, monitor, and regulate the use of PFAS and released an update to its action plan programin February 2020. Two weeks after he filmed the foamy water, Earl aimed the camcorder at one of his cows. Initial data showed evidence that it did. They would nuzzle him as he scratched their heads. His freezer had brimmed with venison, wild turkey, squirrel, and rabbit. 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. 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. DuPont's Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. 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. Similarly, Bilotts boss, Tom Terp (Tim Robbins), is not on the record as ever having threatened to cut Bilotts balls off and feed them to DuPont himself if his subordinate were to ever again unilaterally send internal documents found via discovery to a federal regulatory agency or speak on his findings to Congress. 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. 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. "Mysterious wasting disease" and. Even down near the tips of it. In 1970, a company that purchased 3Ms PFOS-based firefighting foam abruptly halted a demonstration after it killed fish in a nearby stream. As he does in the film, the real Bilott did begin to experience strange symptoms in 2010 similar to the strokelike transient ischemic attack seen in the movie. GRAPHIC CONTENT: An excerpt from Wilbur Earl Tennant's video showing the mysterious wasting disease affecting his cows in the 1990s. Where they should have been smooth, they looked ropy, covered with ridges. 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. The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare Wilbur Tennant - facebook.com About 600 are in use today, according to the EPA. The Kiger family, teacher Joseph Kiger and his wife, Darlene, really did receive a cagey and curiously worded letter from the local Lubeck water district in October 2000 notifying them that an unregulated chemical named PFOA was present in their drinking water at low concentrations. And, as the film intimates, this letter, delivered on the public utilitys letterhead, was first reviewed by DuPont and started the clock on the statute of limitations. Much of the biographical information about the Kiger family, including Darlenes first marriage to a DuPont engineer who came home sick and called it the Teflon flu, also checks out. 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. Bilott is back in court again. Anne Hathaway as Sarah Bilott and the real-life Sarah Bilott. On August 31st of 2017, E. I. Dupont de Nemours Company and the Dow Chemical Company merged as part of a $130 billion merger. Tennants Farm Pond Dam, Wood County, West Virginia. The other companies named in the lawsuit did not respond to Time's requests for comment. DuPont settled the Tennant case for an undisclosed amount. He died of . Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Thing was, time was running out. Photo illustration by Slate. A key component of Teflon was C8, also known as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). As a father, he had watched his little girls splash around in its shallow ripples. "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. The carcasses lay where they fell. 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 state vet wouldnt even come out to the farm. Her calf, black and white, lay dead on its side in a circle of matted grass. Hard labor was his birthright. The pattern element in the name contains the unique identity number of the account or website it relates to. (Maddie McGarvey/for the Washington Post). 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. Wilbur Earl Tennant - May 15, 2009 - Obituary - Tributes.com A videotape Tennant shot with a VHS camcorder shows emaciated cows with tumors on their hides. The US House of Representatives passed a bill in January 2020 that would require the EPA to deem per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) hazardous and establish a national drinking water standard. 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.. The True Story Behind Dark Waters Affects You - Refinery29 The True Story Behind Dark Waters, Explained - The Cinemaholic Wilbur Tennant. Somebodys not doing their duty, he said to the camera, to anyone who would listen. It was contaminated with high levels of PFOA. Earl had sought help, but no one would step up. Farmer uncovers company's dark secret after cows kept dying: 'An 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. Used to help protect the website against Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks. I could find no record of any such incident taking place. PDF The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's W orst Nightmare - News Services "In 1991, DuPont scientists determined an internal safety limit for PFOA concentration in drinking water: one part per billion. He didnt believe it anymore. The problem, he thought, was not what they were eating but what they were drinking. During the years before DuPont settled the lawsuit paying the Tennants an undisclosed amount without assigning blame for the dead cows the company sent Bilott boxes of documents he requested through the normal court process.