I am cranky. Specifically, I am cranky because I was kept awake last night by the Westlake Mercer Cleanup Project ^[1]. No, that’s not the name of my neighbor’s math rock band, but rather the official moniker of Conoco’s efforts at the intersection of Westlake and Mercer to cleanup a gasoline line leak.

A leak that occurred in 1980.

Now, you may be thinking, “Well, maybe there’s some gas left after 26 years. Maybe it’s poisoning Paul Allen!” But let me direct your attention to Questions & Answers ^[2]:

What risks are there to humans and the environment from this contamination?
Environmental investigations indicate that the site has not been shown to pose a risk to human health or the environment.

Okay, so maybe it’s affecting the groundwater?

What impact does the site have on domestic water systems?
The groundwater and soil contamination near the site did not impact the city’s domestic water systems. Additionally, property owners within the area receive their water from the City of Seattle’s municipal water supply.

Okay, okay, but what about Lake Union?

Has the contamination reached Lake Union?
No.

So why the hell is this going on? It’s starting to feel like it is simply to make my life a living hell, because it means that Westlake has been closed (mostly or completely) since I first moved to South Lake Union. With Westlake closed, all northbound traffic connecting to Broad gets shifted onto Fairview, which gets backed up like…well, I can think of a lot of horrible similes here involving the colons of overweight men and vast amounts of red meat, but I’ll leave it to your imagination. And when you live on Fairview and have urgent teriyaki business in Queen Anne, this gets pretty frustrating.

And then, on top of all this indignation, suddenly construction started up last night…at 12:15am. Which means a huge spotlight shining into my bedroom and construction noise all night. And this, my friends, was the last straw for me. When Westlake is already closed off 24/7, what do we gain by having construction at midnight? Especially when the “improvement” part of the project is questionable at best?

None of this makes sense to me–surely I’m missing something, because there’s no way this could be as stupid as it seems. Does anyone out there have some rational explanation for all this?