The historic Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary is located on an island in San Francisco Bay. The perpetual environment of saltwater and fog has caused many corrosion problems for the National Park Service (NPS), who oversees the site. In 2008, the NPS realized something had to be done to slow down ongoing corrosion and remove loose concrete that could fall off high prison building walls and threaten visitor safety. The work was complicated by a limited budget and the designation of Alcatraz as a bird sanctuary where the bird habitat must not be disturbed by maintenance activity from February through September.
NPS worked around the difficulties by contacting their Cortec® distributor for solutions. The repair ultimately involved removing spalled concrete, coating exposed steel with CorrVerter®, and applying MCI®-2020 to mitigate unseen corrosion beneath the surface. The products were easy to apply and cost-effective. Also, the fact that they could treat larger areas presented NPS with a potential cost savings on future repairs.

To read the full case history, please visit:
https://www.corteccasehistories.com/?s2member_file_download=access-s2member-level1/ch376.pdf

Keywords: Alcatraz, historic San Francisco, corrosion problems, cost savings on repairs, saltwater corrosion, limited budget solutions, Cortec, CorrVerter, MCI, MCI-2020

For a PDF version please click here.