The Dilbit Disaster
Inside The Biggest Oil Spill You’ve Never Heard Of
Inside Climate News won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in national reporting for this four-part narrative series and six-part follow-up about an oil spill most Americans have never heard of. More than 1 million gallons of oil spilled into the Kalamazoo River in July 2010, triggering the most expensive cleanup in U.S. history, at a cost of more than three-quarters of a billion dollars. After two years, the cleanup still wasn’t finished.
Why not? Because the underground pipeline that ruptured was carrying diluted bitumen, or dilbit, the dirtiest, stickiest oil used today. It’s the same kind of oil from Alberta, Canada, that the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, if it were ever built, would carry across America’s largest drinking water aquifer.
The Dilbit Disaster (Winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting)
A black goo stopped just 10 feet from the metal cap that marked his drinking water well. Walking on the tarry mess was like stepping on chewing gum.
By Elizabeth McGowan and Lisa Song, InsideClimate News


Inside the Dilbit Disaster, Part 2
By Elizabeth McGowan and Lisa Song, InsideClimate News

Inside the Dilbit Disaster, Part 3
By Elizabeth McGowan and Lisa Song, InsideClimate News

Inside the Dilbit Disaster: Epilogue
By Elizabeth McGowan and Lisa Song, InsideClimate News

Timeline of the Dilbit Disaster
By Elizabeth McGowan, InsideClimate News

2 Years After Spill, Dilbit Still Threat to Kalamazoo River
By David Hasemyer

Pipeline Project Raises Mich. Landowners’ Ire
By David Hasemyer

Few Oil Spills Found by Leak Detection Technology
By Lisa Song

Keystone XL Wouldn’t Have Most Advanced Safeguards
By Lisa Song

A New Oil Pipeline for Lake Michigan Watershed
By David Hasemyer and Lisa Song
