Follows is a transcript of an interview NGWA conducted with Robert Bilott, author of Exposure, the story behind the major motion picture, Dark Waters.
NGWA: How did you approach writing the book? It’s very accessible and well detailed for a story that spans 20 years. Did the fact so much of the story was documented for the case help with recalling details and how events unfolded?
Bilott: This has been a long process and it took many years to pull all this information together. I was really looking to find a way to make this story available to folks — to help them understand what we know, what’s happened, and what’s been done with this chemical. Particularly as we saw PFOA and related PFAS chemicals pop up in communities all across the country I was hoping to pull all the facts of the case and story together in a way that was understandable, to let people and communities know what has already happened, and the current science on this so they don’t have to spend another 20 years reinventing the wheel.
NGWA: There seems to be a continuous theme of you being an outsider in the book — shy, not necessarily the most outgoing person, and not fitting in at Taft, college, or in Cincinnati’s close-knit community. Do you still feel that way now that you've gained so much recognition for your work and are more of a public figure?
Bilott: Well, I’m definitely the same person and, in many ways, I think my personality worked well in the context of this litigation. Being someone who is focused on details and happy to sit down with a huge stack of documents and spend many hours, if not many days, putting facts in order and piecing things together I think worked out well for the case.
NGWA: Yes, with your attention to detail and family ties to West Virginia, you seemed tailormade for this case.
Bilott: I’m not the type of person who wants to see an executive summary. I need to read through the documents myself and read and reread things, and I enjoy digging through the facts and figuring out the history.
NGWA: In the book, once you discover how widespread the PFOA exposure is and the lengths to hide it you write, “This was more the stuff of Hollywood thrillers than real life.” After that point was there any part of you that thought this story would one day become a Hollywood film and that you were playing the leading role in this drama yet to be made?
Bilott: No, my focus has always been to do what we could to help these folks and protect them and get the information out to the public and government regulators. We wanted to help them sound the alarm once we realized the scope of this public health threat.
This was something that went far beyond one farmer and his family, and far beyond the communities of West Virginia and Ohio. Once we realized that we were dealing with something that had resulted in possible contamination across the country, if not the globe, bringing attention to the health threat has remained one of my primary objectives.
NGWA: Past a good story, what do you want readers to get out of this book?
Bilott: I think all of us have a right to clean water and I think most of us, especially in United State, assume that when we turn on that tap, someone has already been looking out for us to make our water safe. That we have systems in place, regulatory agencies and other entities that are ensuring there are not dangerous chemicals in our water.
I think what we see through this story is that this may not always be the case. We have the right to understand what we are being exposed to and we need to demand that systems are in place that make sure we are provided with information about what we are being exposed to and the potential health effects.
Hopefully with the book and movie coming out, people will begin to more fully understand that PFOA/PFAS exposure exists and there is information available on what these chemicals can do to us.
I also hope the book can help inspire change at the national level to make sure these chemicals are cleaned up. We are seeing steps in that regard at the state level and we are starting to see more movement on the federal level.
NGWA: You keynoted NGWA’s PFAS Management, Mitigation, and Remediation Conference in June. What did you think of the presentations you heard? What are you feeling on the role of nongovernmental groups’ role for the future of PFAS contamination?
Bilott: We are looking at a situation where we most likely have very widespread exposure. This is a chemical that is being found in the groundwater, in drinking water, and in soil all across the country. This is going to be potentially very expensive to clean up and I think we have to look at who’s going to help pay that cost. Should those forced to install a filter or treatment system for PFOA/PFAS have to pay the cost? Should the taxpayers or consumers be stuck paying this cost? I don’t think they should be.
NGWA: Early in your book, you mention movies like Erin Brockovich and A Civil Action and along with being a corporate defense attorney “knowing the evil, faceless corporation can become real,” but also knowing that many corporations act in good faith with a strong moral compass, what do you feel the state of trust is in corporate America and what can companies do to gain and retain trust?
Bilott: If we look at the situation that I was working on with DuPont, we are essentially looking at a lack of transparency — information existed that made clear there was a public health threat, the company possessed information that the public and government regulators did not have, and made the repeated decision to not turn that over.
My focus is on working on ways to get information to the public and to the scientific and regulatory communities. We need to make sure that once we know there is a health threat like this, we are able to take actions to address it and clean it up as soon as possible. When dealing with issues of public health, transparency is paramount.
NGWA: Much of the world’s first time hearing about PFAS will be through your book and the upcoming movie. This story will obviously, and justly, make a lot of people angry and also scared about their health as it relates to these chemicals — do you see many signs of hope for our future as it relates to PFAS?
Bilott: I think what you see through the book and what you will see through the movies is, yes, we are dealing with a substantial public health threat, but individuals and communities can force major changes and make a dramatic difference.
Communities that come together and work together can change the world, as the community in West Virginia and Ohio did. Those communities saw 69,000 people come together and participate in a massive public health study that finally was able to put to rest this argument that there wasn’t enough information on what PFOA could do to humans.
I think seeing the power of what an individual or community can do to prompt changes like this can be very encouraging.
And we are seeing the consequences of that play out on a large scale. We see states across the country taking action based on the data that came out of this work, and we are seeing signs of action starting to be taken on this at the federal level for the first time in 20-30 years.