Story of shells blocking Bertha repair sounds completely made up

Taken from Monday’s edition of The Dori Monson Show.

Is anyone buying this Bertha story?

The Washington State Department of Transportation and Seattle Tunnel Partners have announced they’re going to have to spend several days delayed so that they can have archeologists check out some shells they’ve found.

A Washington State Department of Transportation official says it could take “several days or a week” for the state to come up with a plan and consult with Indian tribes before archaeologists can begin sifting through a deposit of shells found above the stalled boring machine for a tunnel under downtown Seattle.

This is the most bogus story ever. I can’t believe that everybody in the media is buying this except for me.
Bertha has been stalled for almost a year now.

They said they were going to repair the stalled machine and start digging again in March. For the repair, they have to dig this shaft so they can get to Bertha. And in digging that shaft, they ran into shells.

Now think about this for a second: If the machine hadn’t broken down, they wouldn’t have dug that shaft and they wouldn’t have hit those shells. It wouldn’t have been an issue unless the machine had broken down.

I think this is a completely made up story by Seattle Tunnel Partners and the Washington Department of Transportation. Maybe they threw the shells in there themselves so they could say oh yeah we’re delayed not because we’re incompetent but because we’re so culturally sensitive.

Let’s say the shells are artifacts, so what? I’m sick and tired of having to treat 200-year-old stuff like it’s something mystical. I know I’m going to be blasted for this. But I’m just speaking a little truth here that nobody else has the guts to speak.

So what if they found some shells? If nobody knew they were there, they were going to stay there if they hadn’t had to drill this access pit. But there’s more that leads me to believe this is a completely made up story.

Chris Dixon with Seattle Tunnel Partners told KIRO 7: “We’ve lost most of the wiggle room we had in the schedule.”

Oh, what a coincidence. They had just a few days earlier said we think we can still make the March deadline but it’s going to be really close now.

In other words, they were screwing up again on meeting yet another deadline after a huge delay and right when they’re out of wiggle room, all of a sudden now they can blame another delay not on their incompetence but how sensitive they are culturally.

Does anybody believe this? Why am I the only person in the media who is questioning this when it’s so obviously a completely made up, fabricated story.

If it’s not made up and they actually did hit some shells, then we have to stop being so sensitive about stuff that was left in the ground. But I guarantee you this is a made-up story.

Taken from Monday’s edition of The Dori Monson Show.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.