Science vs Spin: Dilbit Sinks in the Real World, But Not in Studies Funded by Oil Industry

From:  DeSmog

COMMENTARY - You are not going to see stories like this and the last one in the main stream media.  Each is an example of the psychopathic underscore of greed playing out in multiple industries today, Big Oil chief among them.  The solution is to relocalize, rebuild local economies on new, clean technologies.  These exist and can be brought into common usage in only a few years.  Solar went parity in five US states in 2010.  It has reached parity in ten states today. Big Oil needs to be bankrupted for its business plan which is based on the externalization of costs to all of us.  

By Justin Mikulka • Thursday, March 19, 2015 - 15:44 

“Once the oil started to sink, it made things a lot more difficult on our recovery.”

Those were the words of Greg Powell of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during his presentation on March 10th at the National Academy of Sciences conference on the Effects of Diluted Bitumen on the Environment. Powell was one of the people involved in the response and clean up of the Kalamazoo River tar sands dilbit spill in 2010 where an Enbridge pipeline cracked and spilled approximately one million gallons of diluted bitumen into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.

Powell presented a disturbing account of what happened at Kalamazoo with pictures showing a river with “bank to bank” oil and contamination for almost 40 miles. This damage took over four years and more than a billion dollars to clean up. And Powell explained the main reason was that diluted bitumen isn’t like other oil.  MORE