Dry Run used to flow gin clear. Driftwood is scattered along the shoreline at Point Park in Parkersburg, West Virginia, on Nov. 20, 2019. She had spent the summer in the hollow, drinking out of Dry Run until she’d started to act strangely. This area will be like most other towns in West Virginia; it’ll collapse.” He’s also aware of the inherent dangers in living within the shadow of the chemical industry. At fifty-four, Earl was an imposing figure, six feet tall, lean and oxshouldered, with sandpaper hands and a permanent squint. Candace Jones, a neighbor and longtime friend of Roettger’s, said she hates the perception that the community has been divided between the DuPonters and everyone else. Bilott won a $670 million settlement with Dupont over its undisclosed contamination of the drinking water of 70,000 residents in West Virginia and Ohio. That calf had died miserable. “I don’t understand them great big dark red places across there. “And they’re going to find out one of these days that somebody’s tired of it.”. The Kigers have spent the last two decades working to uncover the impacts and effects of C8 exposure in the region. He has a filter installed in his kitchen. The edge in his voice was anger. He was speaking to the camcorder pressed to his eye. Good River: Stories of the Ohio is a series about the environment, economy and culture of the Ohio River watershed, produced by seven nonprofit newsrooms. I don’t ever remember seeing that in there before.”, He cut out the heart and sliced it open. Now it was filled with specimens you might find in a pathology lab. Here’s what we learned. They just turn their back and walk on,” he told the camera. 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. “Somebody’s not doing their duty,” he said to the camera, to anyone who would listen. It was the old ‘hey-look-over-here!’ move to keep the Teflon dollars flowing into their bank account.”. At least that’s what his family had been told thirteen years before by the company that had bought their land. She now lives on the other side of the state, in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle. “What would it look like if we packed up?”. It looked, at most, a few days old. Higgs, now an emergency room physician living in Richmond, Virginia, recalls returning from road trips with his family asleep in the back seat, awakened as they approached home by the familiar waft of chemicals. The verdict included damages from DuPont's negligence and a finding that the company’s conduct was malicious. To see more, please visit ohiowatershed.org. But there’s a film that opened Dec. 5 at the Regal Cinemas at Grand Central Mall that’s attracting a lot of attention in his community. I love this state. And I’m gonna cut her open and find out what caused her to die. Its head was tipped back at an awkward angle. “But you just give me time. Behind him, white-faced Herefords grazed in rolling meadows. A thicker foam gathered in eddies, trembling like egg whites whipped into stiff peaks so high they sometimes blew off on a breeze. He knew the folks at the DNR, because they gave him a special permit to hunt on his land out of season. Earl loved his cows, and the cows loved Earl. But “my heart hurts,” Tracewell said, to think that her daughter’s illnesses might be a consequence of all that. Calf born dead.”. “We came from that community and that community did a lot to shape us. COVID-19 is putting the economy on fast-forward, The two-decade legal battle with DuPont over a toxic chemical, Corporate infighting leaves New Jersey residents unsure who will clean up chemical contamination, Dow DuPont merger spells uncertainty in West Virginia, When coal miners can’t breathe, getting compensation is an uphill legal battle, The agrarian roots of Pappy Van Winkle bourbon whiskey, Ex-Trump lawyer Cohen pleads guilty in hush-money scheme. This excerpt was provided courtesy of Atria Books. Something is the matter right there. 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. In Horsham and surrounding towns in eastern Pennsylvania, and at other sites around the United States, the foams once used routinely in firefighting training at military bases contained per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. That thing’s about … oh, two-thirds bigger than it should be.”. The chemical had seeped into the water supply of at least six public water systems in West Virginia and Ohio. The hand that fed did clench. What if they had the opportunity to extend that same loyalty to a company that’s equally invested in the economic, physical and emotional health of the community? Higgs’ father has ulcerative colitis, and his brother received treatment for polycystic kidney disease in high school. The smell was odd. The chemical seeped into the water supplies of the communities of Lubeck and Little Hocking, immediately west of Parkersburg, and the city of Belpre, Ohio, just across the river; and three other water systems. Earl had come to believe that its water was now poisoned — with what, he did not know. 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