A "Bit" of Bitumen = A BIG Problem

Ok, so you know what oil is, right?  And you've seen oil spills before.  Total disasters.  They're in the news all the time.  Remember the huge BP oil spill a few years ago?  Remember that they couldn't stop the oil for a long time?  That spill hurt wildlife, harmed the water, and ruined a lot of beaches for a long time.
Just a little reminder:

On June 26, 2010, a different kind of oil leak occurred.  Some people living along Talmadge Creek in Marshall, Michigan were awakened to a sharp smell.  They noticed that the water in the creek was shiny and black.  Turns out oil had been spilling into the creek from a rupture in a nearby oil pipeline since the night before.

A spill of conventional oil would be bad enough, but this case happened to be worse than that.  Because this was a spill of diluted bitumen. What is bitumen?  Well, it's basically a super-thick version of oil.  But it's worse than oil, because it's so thick it can't flow through pipes on its own.  It has to be treated with chemicals to dilute it enough to get it to flow.  Scientists have learned that bitumen can sink in water. This makes it especially hard to remove. 

 Imagine trying to get to the bottom of creeks and rivers to get all of the bitumen out.  

Another bad thing about bitumen?  It contains a lot of bacteria.  

Why are we even talking about bitumen anyway?  Companies never used to mine bitumen.  It was too thick and expensive to remove.  But now, the world is running out of conventional oil that was easy and cheap to extract.  So we're moving on to the difficult and expensive stuff.  

That means we can expect more bitumen spills in the future.  Yea.  

This spill had a huge impact on wildlife.  People tried to save the animals.  They saved 90% of the turtles they found, and 80% of the birds.  Even though they also found a lot of muskrats, none of them survived. 

Surprisingly, no fish were killed.  Scientists think they all swam away.  But before we celebrate, we have no idea if this spill will affect the fish in the future.  Remember that bitumen sinks?  Who knows what's at the bottom of the waterways.