Google’s so-called “mystery barge” has been sitting in the San Francisco bay for months now. The barge’s appearance last year, like most things Google, set of a round of wild speculation about Google’s plans for the four-story vessel. In November, when the mystery was solved, Slate’s Josh Voorhees wrote that the tech giant’s actual plans for the under-construction barge were pretty meh.
On Monday, mystery or not, state officials said the barge had to go. Why? Following a series of complaints, local officials did a little investigating, the Associated Press reports, and “found that neither the Treasure Island Development Authority nor the city of San Francisco had applied for required permits for the work to be done at the site and could face fines and enforcement proceedings.”
What’s next for the Google barge? “It needs to move,” Larry Goldzband, head of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, told the AP. “The enforcement action marked the second set of headaches for the barge project,” the AP reports. “Late last year, work was halted after the Coast Guard said additional permits were needed. Construction was expected to resume in March.”
