SEATTLE — Seattle contractors say the state’s order to suspend digging a new Highway 99 tunnel is unjustified.
Seattle Tunnel Partners say they had already responded appropriately to a sinkhole problem when Gov. Jay Inslee ordered them to stop tunneling, reported The Seattle Times.
STP manager Chris Dixon sent Inslee and the Washington State Department of Transportation a letter and a root-cause analysis of the sinkhole. Dixon wrote that contractors immediately filled the sinkhole with a mixture of concrete and sand after it formed in the wake of a tunnel-boring machine on Jan. 12.
“Stopping the (tunnel-boring machine) at its current location is not recommended and increases the risk of creating additional sinkholes,” says the contractors’ study. It also says it’s impossible to know for sure what caused the sinkhole.