Back in January, Seattle officials got pissed off at state officials over a phrase they found in a tunnel subcontractor’s draft of a report about Bertha’s rescue pit. You probably remember the phrase: “risk of a catastrophic failure.”
By the time the engineer’s report was finalized, “risk of a catastrophic failure” had been changed to “will have a significant impact on the structural, geotechnical and hydraulic adequacy of the shaft structure.” Because those two ways of wording it are not the same, and because everyone was panicking about the tunnel rescue pit, and because of ongoing tensions between the city and the state on this project, a proper freak-out at city hall followed, with council members demanding more information and urging the people who work for the city, the people who work for the state, and the people who work for the contractor to communicate better.
It looks like significant progress has been made on that front. That progress is detailed in a letter the Washington State Department of Transportation sent out to SDOT and SPU last week to address the city’s concerns about being kept in the loop.
Read the full letter here.
For context, though, let’s go back in time. The original letter sent by the city agencies led to a very tense discussion among the city council, the Washington Department of Transportation (WSDOT), the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), and Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) inside city hall. Why had the “catastrophic failure” language been removed? And more importantly, why wasn’t the city more directly informed? WSDOT maintained (and still does) that the viaduct was safe—and so was the pit—and that the editing change was a misunderstanding. But as a result of the communication breakdown, WSDOT even suggested limiting the city’s access to a database where all of these reports were shared.
The latest letter walks back from that suggestion. “We are committed to continuing to allow the City the same access to the correspondence in the Aconex database,” the letter from WSDOT’s Todd Trepanier reads, “and encourage you to contact me or any of our staff immediately if you have questions about any of the information contained in the database.”
WSDOT maintains that the pit was never at risk of catastrophic failure, and that the engineer’s report merely listed actions needed to keep the pit safe. Those steps were completed, Trepanier said.
So why was the language changed? That’s one thing the letter doesn’t say.
But according to WSDOT’s letter, there’s more information-sharing to be had. For example, Shannon & Wilson, a consulting firm hired by WSDOT, will issue a report on settlement around the rescue pit “this spring.” The state also offered to assess ground settlement in specific parts of the city at the city’s request; it then noted that settlement monitoring will expand in Sodo, Pioneer Square, and downtown.
WSDOT acknowledged that settlement near Bertha’s rescue pit “was more than predicted” (as far as they knew), and that both Seattle Tunnel Partners and Shannon & Wilson were working to better understand what was going on. Survey data was being submitted to the city frequently, WSDOT added. The city and the state now also meet at a “bi-weekly survey task force” gathering.
All in all, WSDOT’s letter seems like it described sincere steps to obtain more transparency between city and state. And that’s a good thing.
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