Comment on Nearly all Bay Bridge tower rods sitting in water

Nearly every one of the 423 steel rods that anchor the tower of the new Bay Bridge eastern span to its base has been sitting in potentially corrosive water, Caltrans officials said Tuesday — one the most serious construction defects found yet on the $6.4 billion project. Several of the high-strength, 25-foot-long rods inspected after the first signs of trouble appeared last month were found to be submerged in several feet of water, in part because not enough grout had been pumped into protective sleeves to keep them dry, officials told members of a bridge project oversight committee in Oakland. Caltrans resident engineer Bill Casey said crews had found water on 95 percent of the rods at the base of the tower, in most cases “one or two inches” deep in pockets between grout that surrounds the rods in their sleeves and caulk caps intended to keep the sleeves dry. Maroney, however, said he was hopeful that because the rods were installed at a lower tension than those on the seismic structure, they won’t be as vulnerable to hydrogen that can lead to corrosion in high-strength steel. In examining the rods’ sleeve holes in 2011, an inspector found “objects such as cigarette butts, U-bolts and wood chips,” along with standing water, a Caltrans summary said. Higher-ups at the agency were unaware of the inspector’s report until earlier this year, when a video and photos of the damage were found on an engineer’s computer, said Tony Anziano, Caltrans’ toll bridge program manager. Caltrans officials said the $20 million testing program that began after the rods failed has found no sign that the remaining 2,000 rods and bolts on the span are vulnerable to similar damage.