Sure, let's speculate... it'll be a great thread. The greatest.

Without any kind of proof of this, I'm skeptical. I'm also skeptical of WSDOT.... fuck.

This is when we get to whip out #Berthagate right?

NPR this morning elucidates the boulder problem better than WSDOT, so far:

...For the past week, specially trained crews have been performing "hyperbaric inspections" in the claustrophobic space around the cutting head, and they've found more potential snags, including a rock that was almost exactly 3½ feet wide. The rock was slightly too big to be "digested" by the conveyor system that moves rubble away from the cutting face, but too light to be fractured into smaller pieces by the cutting face. It's not something that could stop Bertha by itself, but it's a symptom of a bigger problem.

It's like trying to crack a nut with a hammer without being able to hold the nut down. Bertha has a harder time fracturing rocks when those rocks are light — or loosely compacted. At the moment, the machine is only about 50 feet down, in the loosely compacted fill of Seattle's waterfront. Once the machine gets deeper under downtown, engineers assume the more tightly packed soils will hold rocks in place firmly enough to let Bertha chew through...

On your parenthetical question,

Bertha isn't really stuck. The department of transportation describes the situation as one of "increasing resistance" at the front end, and operators want a full picture of the situation before they put the $80 million machine back in gear.

Or, as the project manager put it to an impatient legislative committee (one more metaphor!): "If it was your car, and all your warning lights were on and you still needed to make a trip, would it be wise to make that trip?"

did any body ask this question in the numerous press conferences?
have you called WSDOT to ask this question?
if they're just "halting" it, why'd they send divers into the mixing chamber or whatever, which is really risky?

I thought Bertha could not back up and could only eat its way through to the end. So it would be nearly impossible for WSDOT take Bertha back to Customer Service at Hitachi Zosen.

Very interesting speculation... Find a leaker and get the story!

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to!

This is my favorite idea so far!

This is not anyone's fault. Who could have expected there would be damn rocks down there?!? No one.

Let's just keep throwing money into this shit-show. The only thing Bertha can chew through is cash, so just how many billion dollars will it be?

@7, right now it could be excavated (nothing of importance above it, and not that far down) and either disassembled/sent back, or extensively modified if there's an engineering solution to improve its performance in mixed soils.

C'mon WSDoT, just get the extended warranty and drive it off a cliff on the last day.

With solid journalism like this, Goldy is a real contender to win The Stranger another Pulitzer.

Just kidding. Actually, this reads more like a Glenn Beck piece.

I for one am glad the Red counties want to spend up to TEN times the projected cost to finish unearthing the clutch of Godzilla eggs.

Cause 50% cost for the first 11% done could go even more bad very easily.

Wait until the next stop reveals we are digging through ancient tribal burial sites

@14 dumbass this is a blog not a newspaper

It's too deep for ancient tribal burial sites. Homo sapiens is not that old a species.

@17

It's too deep for ancient tribal burial sites. Homo sapiens is not that old a species.

WSDOT delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of SODO...

Holy shit, If I knew this was Hitachi's refund policy I'd have pulled that "massager" out much, much sooner.

This is a good theory. The next step after drilling 1000' is paying for the machine. They're not going to return Bertha for a refund, assuming of course that they still want the tunnel.

However, the 1000' mark is the perfect place for a thorough inspection, vetting all of the potential problems so far, and, most important, getting Hitachi to engineer and pay for any necessary repairs.

I'd like to know the per day cost of these delays.

I'm betting on "overabundance of caution".

It makes great sense to stop before 1000 feet and check out the progress so far, and maintain your option to call in Hitachi support teams --for free, probably-- have them double-check that the "World's Largest Tunnel Boring Machine" is actualy working properly, according to their experience and design.

Carry on. (PS. The Tunnel is *still* a stupid plan.)

WSDOT Press Release June 3rd, 2014:

Well the bad news is that Hitachi would only give us store credit, but Magic Wand massagers for everyone!

http://www.isberthastillstuck.com

Goldy, why dont you tease out your hair, hold you hands in the air like your holding a basketball and scream "ALIENS!!"

@22 The "abundance of caution" theory would actually be the most plausible if WSDOT would just confirm that they have paused drilling out of an abundance of caution.

That makes a hell of a lot more sense than anything else. They are doing a top to bottom inspection before they give up on the warranty. Though why they wouldn't just admit that is beyond me.

@17 except we are in the mud flat area - we don't know what's there just what we think Might be there

@16:

People who can't tell the difference between, say, The Onion, FOX News, and The New York Times, aren't going to be exactly swayed by that degree of logic.

You call that speculation??
Where's the conspiracies??

Hey, this is what **I** heard:

They - state conservatives - never wanted to complete the tunnel. The plan has always been to just make a big hole into which Hanford's nuclear waste will be deposited plus whatever can't get shipped to Yucca Mountain Nevada. Why? To chase off, or kill off, the Seattle lefties.

Yeah, pretty sure I heard that.

It's all the longshoremen's fault...

Does anyone know the date that is will be acceptable to play the "I told you so" card?

Would it be irresponsible for Goldy to speculate? It would be irresponsible for him NOT to.

Goldy's probably got as much data to speculate on as Cthulu or raindrop up there so as long as you give Goldy's conclusions equal weight, speculate away.

Conspiracies like this never make sense. They require too many people to be quiet for them to work.

@32, the day that Bertha got "stuck".

The big reason, supposedly, in the beginning, for this whole/hole big tunnel project was ostensibly, a great concern for us the public about predicted gigantic 9 point earthquake. That was "put out there" as the primacy for tearing down viaduct. We are to think gigantic earthquake scenario fares well with a world's deepest tunnel? Will we be left down in the deep tunnel in the gigantic 9 point earthquake? Preferable to experience the gigantic 9 point earthquake in the deep tunnel? Renowned, respected engineers said they could have retrofitted the current viaduct to make it fare better than the tunnel in the gigantic earthquake (being predicted). But Seattle does not think that way --IT WAS SEATTLE CITY that wanted tunnel -- the state originally wanted another elevated roadway!! Seattle would never think, of course not of the retrofit of current viaduct because that was the LEAST expensive option, and, well, for Seattle sensibilities, the least GLAMOROUS option. Seattle just HAS to have something special DEEPEST IN THE WORLD,etc MOST EXPENSIVE (just wait and see, $$$$) OH, and that special waterfront view....???IT WILL BE ALL BLOCKED SOON BY HIGH RISE HIGH TAX CONDOS!! We have more waterfront view with the viaduct tan there will ever be again!! and that special "world's deepest"... so what if it costs?, huh, 14?? billion...with huge cost overruns --watch for WAY more cost overruns here than in Boston's Big Dig...Seattle's overruns will be BIGGER, MORE SPECIAL! (of course...deepest and biggest.)

Imagine. There was an artist’s rendition of the completed tunnel in the Seattle Times. It shows that there will be only two VERY narrow lanes of traffic in each direction in the tunnel. AS NARROW AS IS LEGALLY POSSIBLE. Compared with three lanes of traffic in each direction on the viaduct! AND NO HOV LANES in the tunnel. There will be a very small space off to one side of the two narrow lanes, supposedly barely enough room for an emergency vehicle. AND THE ONE DIRECTION OF TRAFFIC WILL BE DEEPER DOWN UNDERGROUND! (Double decker style, which is supposedly what they did not like about the viaduct.) Brilliant?

I see a lot of words and capital letters across two separate posts, which usually means "I am completely nuts"