The mysterious object blocking Seattle tunnel was just a pipe

The mysterious, Thing-like object blocking Seattle tunnel-boring project has finally been revealed after weeks of investigation. Sadly, it wasn’t an 18th century shipwreck or a glacial boulder, as many speculated. In the end, the culprit was a steel well casing left behind by an exploratory groundwater project back in 2002. The pipe should have been removed when the project finished or, failing that, removed in preparation for the well-boring project, but miscommunication between the teams meant it wasn’t discovered until the project was fully underway. Nevertheless, the well was on the initial maps of the region, as workers were quick to point out. “I don’t want people to say WSDOT didn’t know where its own pipe was,” Department of Transportation spokesman Lars Erickson told The Seattle Times, “because it did.”