Lakeway, a Central Texas city, is actively working to mitigate the financial hit for homeowners struggling with "concrete cancer," a defect impacting potentially thousands of pools in the region. This condition, scientifically known as alkali-silica reaction (ASR), causes concrete to crack and expand, compromising the integrity of pools, making them unusable and eventually leading to a costly rebuild, KVUE reports. At a community level, officials are contemplating changes to pool-permitting ordinances that will reduce costs by waiving certain inspections and revisiting the pool-permitting fee structure.
"This is a real problem, and at least as a municipality, we can help our residents," Lakeway Mayor Thomas Kilgore stated, highlighting the community's proactive approach to a problem that surfaced only about a year and a half ago, experts believe pools built from 2017 could be affected. The number of local cases is estimated at 80 to 100 according to city officials, but the actual geography of this issue spans beyond Lakeway borders as explained by Community Impact and confirmed in conversations between Lakeway leaders and various industry professionals.
Residents like Deborah Conner have faced the stark reality of this defect, with her barely two-year-old pool showing significant signs of ASR. "It's devastating when you've built something, spent a lot of money on it and then it fails and you're stuck without a way out," Conner told KVUE. The proposed amendments would alleviate some of the financial stress by potentially reopening existing pool permits and waiving fees such as the $1,050 re-permitting fee.
Leander resident Sachin Patel, among numerous pool owners, encountered the nightmare of ASR, with irreparable damage materials could manifest months or years after construction, leaving owners like Patel facing major rebuild costs, generally more than double the original pool price according to industry experts, even as lawsuits pile up against pool builders and concrete suppliers in the wake of companies going bankrupt and a litany of warranty voidances, residents are left grasping at straws as insurance companies dodge liability citing faults in the construction supply chain, Community Impact elaborates on the multi-pronged issue.
The ongoing crisis pivots on the question of preventive measures and regulatory oversight, with some industry professionals arguing for increased education and tighter regulation; the Central Texas Pool and Hot Tub Alliance underscores a need for builder subcontractor due diligence, yet even as pool builders like Cody Pools disassociate from implicated concrete companies, residents and the broader community must navigate the legal, financial, and procedural maze surrounding ASR, Lakeway's initiatives display a municipal acknowledgment of the issue along with a desire to ease affected residents' burdens, while broader solutions might need to be sought on state-level platforms, suggests Mayor Kilgore's referral to potential state legislative interventions given the extent of the issue's reach beyond local confines.
