Took several years digging through documents to finally
realize I was dealing with something a lot bigger than
that, and it was something that was impacting a lot of folks,
not just the farmer and his family, but this was a
contamination that was possibly spreading across the whole
community, but not the whole country and the whole world.
Welcome to the Environmental Transformation Podcast, where we
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Now let's get started. Welcome to the Environmental
Transformation podcast. I'm your host, Sean Grady and
today's guest is the amazing Robert Balat.
Robert, thank you for joining the podcast today.
We are here live at the AH and P Hazmat Summit in Louisville, KY.
And Robert just completed his keynote speaker speaker spot for
us here this morning. And it was an amazing speech and
the audience was just so happy and and amazed by your your
talk. So what was your take on the
response for the the audience? Oh, it was incredible.
I was so pleased to be able to be here.
I mean, this is really the folks that hopefully will be helping
us figure out how to fix this whole issue with P phos forever
chemicals. Yeah, exactly.
I mean, the, the, the storyline that you gave about, you know,
from your the start and to where we are today was a timeline that
it's really hard to put together, but you did it so
well. You just explained it 'cause
you've been living it for so long.
But I think the audience were just amazed that, you know, it's
been a 252426 year journey for you to see where we are today.
Talk about what it was like to, if you could for the audience to
hear, like, what was it like to be in the trenches every day in
the courtroom trying to convince people that this is a real issue
and you guys need to acknowledge this and stop the, you know,
stop the cover up here. Frustrating, very frustrating,
you know, to be doing everything you really could at the time.
And I was trying to do everything I could as a lawyer
to, to raise awareness, you know, filing briefs and arguing
in court and trying to make information public.
But it was incredibly difficult to breakthrough and took a lot
of additional steps. You're reaching out to the media
and screenwriters and storytellers to help get this
story to finally breakthrough. Yeah, So for the listeners who
don't know Robert, and there may be a few of you, but he is the
attorney behind the movie Dark Waters.
And so if you haven't seen that movie, I highly recommend you
take a, you know, an afternoon off or evening and watch the
movie Dark Waters. It is.
It's the story of the Parkersburg, WV community that's
been affected by P Foss contamination and your journey
of helping win lawsuits against DuPont.
Yeah, it's the movie actually ends around the time of, gosh,
20/15/2016. And since then, unfortunately,
what we've seen happen is the same story repeating itself all
over the United States and now all over the world.
So hopefully more communities, when they're finding out that
these chemicals are in their water and their oil, that they
can at least take take some comfort in knowing that we've
come a long way over the last 20 years and have a lot of
information now that people can use to help fix the problem.
I think the thing I recognize was the challenge of getting the
EPA to actually formally regulate this chemical and the
evidence that you provided over courses of years, that was plain
as day in my mind that based on the information and it took him
so long to get there. And I I'm just scratching my
heads. Why did it take so long?
Yeah, it's one of the reasons I wrote the book Exposure was, you
know, I hear that question a lot.
How is this, that this is still an ongoing issue and that why is
it that we're just now beginning to regulate these chemicals
decades after the story came out?
And, you know, that's unfortunate.
Fortunately, it's the way our regulatory system was set up
from the beginning in the 1970s that just led to this incredibly
difficult process with unbelievable burdens that are
required to with different types of proof and evidence and
science that are needed to move even the smallest steps forward.
And even when we get there, you know, we're finally at the point
where we're beginning to regulate some of these chemicals
in the US. And we see even when we get
there, that's challenged in court, you know, when lawsuits
are brought to try to stop it. So it's an incredibly, it's an
incredibly complicated and confused process that hasn't
worked very well. Right.
I think you know, is it like, you know, I'm a former
regulator, I've been a consulting for 23 years and I've
worked with Superfund, you know, projects and remediation
cleanups and PRPS and and companies just doing Retra.
The interesting part about the lack of disclosure of this
chemical through the Tosca process at the very beginning,
they knew it was toxic and failed to report it.
That was like the big what? Are you kidding me?
They had an obligation as a corporate company to do it.
They didn't. And I think that was like the
big miss from the beginning. Yeah, absolutely.
You know, a lot, a lot of this global contamination might have
been avoided, you know, if some of this had started to be
disclosed when it should have back in the the mid 1970s, you
know, when Tosca first came out and these companies had an
obligation to report substantial risk information.
And, you know, this is one of those situations that what
happens when they don't. You know, unfortunately, nobody
knew that until we were able to get in through litigation and
see these internal documents and show, well, wait a minute, they
did have information and didn't disclose it.
Well, by then, decades have gone by and the contaminations
occurred. And it's kind of difficult, if
not impossible at that point, to put the genie back in.
The bottle toothpaste doesn't go back in the bottle, right?
That is just so mind boggling that that occurred.
And and I think just them knowing all along that it it had
this level of toxicity and not really bringing it and
disclosing it. It's just man's shame on those
industries. You know, that did that in the
in the movie, you were really brought into this whole
situation that you weren't really aware of your yourself at
the time, but by a family friend.
Talk a little bit about the for the listeners, what that was
like when you realized I can't ignore this.
I have to do something. Yeah.
You know, I first first sort of started this whole process back
in 1998 and at the time really had no idea this was going to
turn into a process that dragged on the next 26 years.
It was, you know, a friend of my grandmother's had referred a
farmer in West Virginia to me, Mr. Tennant, who was having
trouble with his cows. And at the time, I thought it
was a pretty simple, see a straightforward issue with some,
some, some chemicals probably coming out of a landfill that we
could address and clean up pretty quickly.
And it was took me a while, took several years digging through
documents to finally realize I was dealing with something a lot
bigger than that. And it was something that was
impacting a lot of folks, not just that farmer and his family,
but this was a contamination that was possibly spreading
across the whole community, but not the whole country in the
whole world. Yeah, I think, I mean, I'm sure
it was pulling on your heartstrings too, a little bit
like, OK. And after you saw some of the
evidence that he provided you, you're like, Oh my God, we have
to do something. You can't just ignore.
It absolutely, you know, not only did we get the chance,
obviously to talk to Mr. Tennant and his wife and see all of the
photographs and the videotapes and hear about how this was
really, you know, devastating his family.
But to visit the farm and to visit the the other family
members and to see, you know, that this was a real problem for
folks that were, they were struggling with it every day and
really felt like we had the ability to help them.
We helped big companies like DuPont.
We didn't represent DuPont, but we we worked with big companies.
And if we had the ability to maybe fix this problem, again,
these were people in the community my mom grew up in.
This is something we ought to do.
And I was fortunate to be able to to be at a law firm that let
me do. It in the movie, though, there
were sometimes I think that the law firm was getting a little
nervous about the cost that was going into funding the, the work
you were doing on behalf of the plaintiffs.
Talk a little bit if you could, like the challenge and the and
the, you know, the stress that that caused because in the
movie, you know, I think you went to the hospital over, you
know, talk a little bit, if you could about that, because that's
important. Yeah, You know, after we
realized that this was a problem that was much bigger than Mr.
Tennant and the the one farm of West Virginia, Yeah, we made
this decision to launch a big class action lawsuit against
DuPont and using a law that really hadn't been used much
before. So we here we were bringing, you
know, this big class action against one of the world's
biggest chemical companies and owner completely unregulated
chemical under new laws. It was a big risk and it dragged
on for several years. And it wasn't clear how that was
going to shake out. And then even once we settled
that case, we had set up this process to to have scientists
figure out what the chemical could really do to people.
And at the time, you know, we thought again, that would be
hopefully wrapped up in a year or so.
And it stretched out over 7 years.
And during that time, it just so happened to be the point in time
where we had this massive economic meltdown going on in
our country, 2008. Right.
So here's money going out the door and all these years of cost
building up and building up. So very stressful because in the
meantime, not only was, you know, this costing a lot for the
law firm, that you had people getting sick in that community,
people waiting for these answers.
So a lot of pressures built up during that.
Period. Oh, yeah, I can only imagine.
And I'm sure the hours you spent like this was your sole job.
There wasn't any other thing you were really doing.
This was 100%, probably 60 to 80 hours a week this job, right?
Yeah. I mean, by the time we had
resolved that, that big class action lawsuit and we're waiting
for the science panel in most, almost all of what I was doing
was working on this case. And you know, because a lot of
the corporate clients weren't necessarily calling me at that
point. So it was a lot of stress.
Oh, I can imagine. You know, the EPA now has come
out in, what is it September of last year, I think it was where
they came out or and said, OK, we've established MCLS for P
Foss largely based on a lot of the UCMR data that was collected
and the information you provided and seeing the lawsuits.
Where do we stand now because they came out and said we're
regulating the long chain, the 2 long chains down to four parts
per trillion and the six or four of the six shorter chain ones
down as as well, the Gen. X ones, right.
And now it went into rule, I guess the law, but I don't know
if it actually like really officially implemented.
I'm kind of thinking because there was a lawsuit that just
was submitted by the industry about no, that's not so is that
rule like in a stay position? It's not really a in in play.
Maybe talk about that. And then also the recent
announcement for the new administration that they want to
pull back the, the, the, the new MCLS for the four shorter chain
compounds and study them further.
Yeah, it's it gets pretty complicated because as you
mentioned, we had the USEPA right, kind of at the end of the
prior administration announced official MCLS, enforceable
drinking water standards for I believe it was 6 different P
Foss including the two that we know the most about PFOAPFOS,
the C8 long chain, right. And they also announced rules
that they were going to regulate those two PFOA and PFOS is
hazardous substances under Superfund.
Those laws became effective, but they had implementation periods
that they would be phased in over time.
And when the new administration came in with the drinking water
rule, they have stood by and are keeping the two drinking water
standards for PFOA and PFOS stated that they were going to
pull back the standards for the other ones and re evaluate those
and possibly resubmit them again.
We don't know yet. And in the meantime, there were
lawsuits filed as you indicated by industry and I think some of
the water associations against the water rule and also industry
filed lawsuits to try to stop the Superfund designation.
Those lawsuits are still pending.
They haven't been resolved yet. And after the new administration
came in, what's been happening is we keep seeing extensions of
time, stays of that litigation to give the EPA time to figure
out what position are they going to take.
So we unfortunately just don't know yet.
What we do know is there's going to be more time for folks to
comply with the drinking water rules that's been extended.
Two years right to 2031 now. It's been extended and and at a
minimum at least we have PFOA and PFOSMCLS remaining
effective. Oh, that's good to hear.
I mean, and and you know, if you're in the process of
treating P phos contamination and you're going to try to get
those two out of your system, that system will more than
likely take out the. Other one Hello ET Nation, I
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So what states do you think are like the first movers and
adopters of establishing their own P FOS levels for industry in
their state? I think we've had several states
that have really sort of led the way on the science on P FOS.
In fact, even the USEPA has looked to the folks within these
states. States like New Jersey, which
have adopted some of the very first state enforceable MCLS in
Minnesota is another as well. Other states have started to
move forward and unfortunately those are states that have
really good toxicologist risks assessors.
They have programs to do this. There are a number of states
though, that don't don't have those resources and have been
waiting for the federal standards or they've got laws
that don't allow them to be any different from the federal
standards. So unfortunately there are a
number of places throughout the country that are dependent on
what the USEPA does. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And, and you're right. And I used to be a former
regulator in Indiana and yeah, I don't believe they have the
resources. They're they, they would
definitely default to the EPA standard and I can see that.
What's your take on the, you know, the drinking water
utilities and how they're responding to this rule and
addressing the contamination in their systems?
Because I kind of feel for them. They didn't 'cause this, but
they're required to fix it. There's not enough money to go
around to actually support them from a state funded type
support. It seems like I know that the,
the infrastructure bill was supposed to allocate a lot of
money, but it really wasn't enough adequately.
And then the ratepayers are the the, the innocent bystanders
here that are really paying in a lot of ways and talk a little
bit about your what you see there.
Exactly. You know, the part of the one of
the main victims of all of this are really the the water
suppliers. You know, these folks didn't put
the pee fuss in the water yet. They're the ones that are
getting stuck with the bills to try to now comply with these
drinking water standards and to try to figure out how do we get
this out of the water. And we, we're representing
hundreds of water supplies all across the country that are
facing this issue. And one of the things we've been
trying to do is make sure that those costs don't get pushed
onto the ratepayers, or at least as much of that cost as
possible. It's placed on the people who
really are responsible, and that's the people who created
these chemicals. So that's why you see all this
litigation and that's been going on across the country against
the makers of those chemicals and firefighting phones to make
sure those costs. Don't get pushed onto the
cities. And that's what led to these
recent settlements of, you know, billions of dollars from three M
DuPont and Tycho BASF, you know, to to to go out toward the water
suppliers to help them. And as you mentioned, the
federal government has also allocated billions.
And yes, it'll probably still cost more than that, but at
least we're trying to do everything we can to make sure
that as much of those costs as possible don't get pushed onto
the victims of the contaminants. Yeah, and and I, that's only
fair. I mean, and I look at it and
it's, it is a travesty, but it does feel like maybe I just not
seeing it, but I, I feel like the utilities could be a little
more vocal and, you know, and also supportive of this
situation, But maybe they are. I again, it's it's a problem
that is really hard to deal with.
And and then I think that the regulating pop P Foss as a rate,
you know, hazardous substance under CERCLA opens up a whole
different can of worms, doesn't it?
I mean, now you've got, you know, all appropriate inquiries
that it opens up, you know, you've got the circle of
liability potential. Now a lot of states are looking
at this like, well, we've got remediation programs.
Maybe we have to reassess a site now that we never anticipated
foreclosure, that we already gave closure for kind of
harkening back to like the vapor intrusion era when that came
out. Well, we have to reopen some.
So what is? Is circular really the best
regulatory framework to to manage this and could it be a
different process? I think you've highlighted some
issues which really help explain why there's a huge debate going
on right now over the Superfund designation and, you know,
possible RECRA rules coming out and other ways to try to
regulate these chemicals. Because really the, the main
thrust here has been want that this desire to make sure that
the people who created these chemicals are the ones
responsible for the cleanups. And, you know, one of the ways
that was thought to do that was, you know, well, let's designate
them hazardous under the Superfund law.
What makes the polluter pay? And there's been real concern,
though, about whether that's the way it'll work and whether those
costs are are possibly going to actually get shifted down to the
victims, to the water providers. For example, when they clean the
stuff out of the water and they end up with spent carbon or
other material that's contaminated with these
materials, suddenly they're now generating this waste that's
going out as hazardous under the Superfund law.
That's going to increase their cost.
So there's a real push and a lot of debate going on right now as
to whether there should be exemptions for certain sort of
innocent. Landfills, landfills come to
mind. I mean, they've got leachate and
they'll treat it, but then there's some levels of that
material that may, you know, leak a little bit and they
didn't 'cause it. They just were the receivers of
it. And now under Circla, they can
be a super fund PRP. Exactly.
And so that's why you see, you know, a real concern being
raised by water providers, by landfill owners, airports, other
folks that are concerned about where those costs are going to
end up. And, yeah, there's been
recognition that maybe we need even a new law.
You know, something I had back in, I think it was 2021, you had
new legislation proposed by Senator Gillibrand out of New
York and others that were looking at, you know, how do we
make sure that these costs actually get placed on the
people that created the chemicals and not the downstream
folks? And that was called the PFOS
Accountability Act. And it was introduced and really
didn't go anywhere, never even got hearings.
It got reintroduced just recently, another year or so
ago, and again, didn't go anywhere.
But so I think it highlights that folks are really searching
for what's the most effective way to make sure the right
people, the people that actually caused the problem, are the ones
who pay these costs. And that's, that's incredibly
difficult in our legal system, right?
Now yeah, I can. I can only imagine.
Well, I definitely feel like my personal opinion is it shouldn't
be in circle ish problem, maybe be in RECRA or or maybe a new
law, right that you just mentioned, which would be great.
And I think that would be appropriate.
But let's see where the government goes with that and
legal minds, you know, help shape that narrative and
conversation. That would be great.
You know, when you look to the future, where do you see
technology helping or or opportunities that they can help
address some of these contamination situations we have
in our hands? I think there's an unbelievable
opportunities that are presented right now in the PFOS world on
the technology side. I mean, you're, you're dealing
with these chemicals that are pervasive in our soil, our
water, food, animals, plants, people, air, I mean, the entire
planet contaminated and some of these chemicals being of the
nature that they'll be there virtually forever, millions of
years, if not longer. And so we need ways effective
technologies for actually removing, getting rid of this
stuff because everything we've pumped out since the 1940s,
which is still there. So yes, we can filter the water.
We could be, there are technologies that already exist
for getting this out of our drinking water, but getting it
out of the aquifers, getting it out of the streams, getting it
out of the lakes, getting it out of the soils.
Those are very difficult challenges, but it's creating
incredible opportunities because the market for this is so huge
that I think you're seeing a lot of folks jumping in trying to
develop those technologies. Now how do we, how do we, can we
burn it? Can we incinerate it?
Can we use plasma? You know, there's all these
different technologies being developed, and I think the
people in that field have just some incredible opportunities
before. I know that the designation of
PFOS as a hazardous substance is having a pretty sizable effect
on the waste industry. A lot of companies, even
landfill firms, they're like, well, we don't want to start
taking this anymore. We need to, you know, I think we
just you guys go incinerate that or find out maybe deep well or
other, you know, scenario. But you know, talk about if you
could have you sensed that? I mean, because it's a, there's
a lot of bent up or there's not a lot of capacity to treat all
of the peep postets out there. I mean, that's another challenge
I think industry's faced with. They're like, we don't have
enough capacity to treat everything if it's going to go
like incineration. Absolutely.
And in fact, part of the problem is too that the laws are also
changing there. You have jurisdictions that are
now preventing or prohibiting incineration or are saying we
don't want this being brought in to our states or you know, it's
so it's, and then now you've got sort of this inconsistent
patchwork, you know, across the country and internationally as
well. Now we we see some companies
that are trying to ship this stuff overseas or from overseas
back into the US to try to figure out where to dispose of
it. So it's sort of the Wild West
out there right now as far as what can you do with it, What is
allowed, where is it allowed, you know, and how long.
Yeah, I, I've, I've just noticed there's a lot of firms that are
just like it's we can take it in has waste landfill, but we're
not taking it non has in the unregulated portion portions of
it. They just don't want to deal
with the future liability, right.
And and that's the big challenge.
You know, earlier you did mention during the speech that
there's a lot of activity around PFOS in, in and around the
world, like in Europe or Australia.
There are a lot of other countries that are dealing with
the same type of issues that we're dealing here from pretty
much the same type of chemical manufacturer facilities that are
there. Can you, have you been involved
or have you been able to talk to other country leaders you know,
that are dealing with and, and, and what's their take on how
they're addressing it? Yeah, I have.
I've had the opportunity to speak with folks at the EU and
the UK and the Australian government and the French as
well that are folks that when they're trying to figure out
what would be the most effective laws and what do we know about
the science. And so trying to really help
these folks understand what do we know and what is known about
this. And So what you've seen is,
yeah, we're we're seeing sort of an awakening across across the
planet that people are realizing, wait a minute, we're
finding the same chemicals in the water in Japan and Australia
and Europe and what's going on here?
And I think they're trying to grasp, is this the same stuff?
Is it different from what we were dealing with in the US?
And the laws are different and the their approaches are
different. So you end up with varying
approaches to how these other countries are trying to address
it. And we know, I'm just trying to
make sure that I can do what I can to help them at least know
what we know and what is what information is available.
Is it a lot of these places when they find these chemicals,
they're thinking, oh, this is something new.
Nobody knows enough anything about it.
And we gosh, we need me When you start doing all these studies.
No, we've got a lot of studies. We've got a lot of data.
Let's let's move forward and not redo a lot of it.
So it's a, it's a. It's very confusing in a lot of
places, right? Now, yeah, it really is.
So it's probably fair to say that you you're in large amounts
of ongoing litigation, a lot of cases across the country, yeah.
There's a lot of litigation still going on.
You know, as I mentioned, in addition to all the water
systems we've been dealing with, you know, you've got claims
we're representing a number of States and dealing with trying
to make sure their natural resources are protected.
And you've got individual cases now being filed by thousands of
people across the country are concerned about cancer and other
health effects. And now you're seeing a lot of
litigation we're not necessarily as involved in with, you know,
companies being sued that are sort of downstream, you know,
that whose products have been found to have these chemicals in
them. So it's unfortunately the
litigation is only growing. And it's not just here in the
US. It's starting now overseas as
well. Wow.
You know, I do feel like there is an awareness now in industry
manufacturers are trying to, you know, eliminate P FOS chemicals
and their products. They're advertising PP FOS free
and it seems like education wise and I guess corporate steward
being a good company steward, you know, is having a big impact
a little bit. There's a change, there's a
shift, but obviously it sounds like we need more, right?
Yes, and I think consumers are really driving a lot of that.
Even though the laws are starting to change, a lot of
that hasn't happened yet. A lot of it's still being
debated among the law of the lawmakers and policy makers.
But in the meantime, consumers have started to become aware
films and other outreach efforts and you know, they're starting
to say, well, I'm not going to wait for the law to say this
shouldn't be in the product. I don't want it in the stuff I'm
buying today. So they're they're reaching out
to the big retailers and saying we don't want these chemicals in
our products. And we're seeing the impact of
that. Some of the biggest retailers in
the planet have you know, fast food makers, fast food wrapper
makers, clothing, carp carpeting and all these companies coming
out and voluntarily saying we're going to take these chemicals
out of our products now. And you know, a lot of times
that's difficult because which chemicals are you talking about
when you say P Phos free, which chemicals are you including and
that what detection level is P Phos free?
So it's difficult, but at least you're seeing awareness that
that is an issue and consumers are are driving that.
And that's good. You know, they're putting their
money where their mouth is. They want to buy the products
that are, you know, lining up with their values.
And that's really good. You know, another topic you hit
on I thought was quite interesting is that you talk
about SDS documents and you know, when you're looking at the
chemical makeup of a product and it says proprietary, I don't
know how many SDSS I've seen like that, like hundreds of
them. And it's not disclosing the
actual chemical. And you know, we're
environmental professionals here in this at this attending this
conference and it's our job to report on, you know, chemical
exposure to potential to admit or or cause harm.
And if you can't get that information from your SD S S and
you're unknowingly exposing your, your coworkers or your,
you know, customers, it's not good.
Now, and that that's been a, that's been a, a problem going
back quite some time, at least with these chemicals, as you
indicated, unfortunately, a lot of times this was considered
proprietary confidential information.
What's what's in the secret sauce, you know, that's got
these chemicals on. And even when the companies
finally did start revealing some of that in their material safety
data sheets, you saw continuing misrepresentations about what
the effects were. You know, this is the no, no
possibility of harm or there's no evidence that this could
cause risk of harm. And so, you know, it's one thing
to disclose it and then it's whether the chemicals even
there. But then you need accurate
information about what the risks.
Also, particularly when if you're the only company making
it or you have the information about what those risks are, you
need to be transparent about what they really are.
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, totally agree.
And well, where do you see next few years now in the forecast
because you know, now we're going to look forward.
I mean, we've been looking backwards about, you know,
what's transpired and the amazing work you've done.
And I personally feel like you single handedly have been the
the driving force of the EPA regulating this material.
And thank you for doing that and and all your tireless efforts.
But where do you see them moving forward?
I think, I guess I'd remain optimistic that we're going to
can see continuing efforts to really regulate and control
these chemicals. I think not only do we have the
public now demanding it, I think you have a lot of lawmakers, a
lot of folks within the scientific community now that do
understand enough about these chemicals and realize the real
risk they present to human health and the environment that
this is now perceived as a real public health threat issue.
Yeah. There's going to be economic
impact because these chemicals are are so pervasive within not
only our economy, but the world economy.
Yeah, it's going to cost money. But I think we also know that
we've got society now that's also keenly concerned about
public health. And, you know, this is something
that we hopefully can do something about.
And, you know, these are chemicals that we know enough
about now to actually do something.
Robert, I, I, you're like my environmental hero and you
should be on the Mount Rushmore Environmental Heroes.
So I want to thank you for taking the time to come and
speak with me and our audience here on the Environmental
Transformation Podcast and also our fantastic members and
attendees of the EHS Hazmat Summit that we're all
environmental professionals trying to do better and make our
world better place to live and comply with the rules and laws.
And so we really thank you for coming and sharing your story,
just an amazing story and, and continue doing what you're
doing. We're here to support you any
way we can and so really appreciate you well.
Thanks so much, it's a pleasure. All right, Robert, thank you so
much. Thanks for listening and
watching the show. If you enjoyed the show then
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media and tell somebody in person.
Thanks for being with us, ET Nation.