LAKEWAY, Texas — The city of Lakeway has voted to amend its pool permitting ordinance in an effort to help homeowners dealing with Alkali-Silica Reaction, also known as ASR or "concrete cancer."
ASR is a pool defect potentially impacting thousands of Central Texas pools, making them unusable. It happens when concrete isn't mixed correctly and lacks a material called fly ash. And the defect can't be fixed – the only option is to demolish the pool and rebuild.
ASR has put pool builders and concrete providers out of business and until recently, many people impacted didn't know about it. Most who are impacted say they haven't been getting help.
The Lakeway City Council met on Monday, Aug. 19, to discuss a financial solution for homeowners with pools impacted by ASR. The council ultimately voted to direct city staff to change the permit process and reduce some of the costs associated with pool inspections.
"I move to recommend to staff to move forward with presentation that was prepared with the addition of requiring some sort of mix receipt or something on a pool permit and to not list pool builders and the fee is waived as described," one council member said during Monday's meeting.
Last week, Lakeway Mayor Thomas Kilgore told KVUE that after meeting with engineers, pool builders and manufacturers, city officials learned roughly 80 to 100 residents in Lakeway could have pools with ASR. Because the defect takes time to show itself, some of them may not know.
"We, as a city, can amend our ordinance and amend the process to allow the homeowner to get back on with the process of building their pool or fixing it," Kilgore told KVUE.
Kilgore said he hopes other cities will follow Lakeway's example and educate their residents.
"My hope is that we can establish a standard that other people might want to emulate," Kilgore said. "I think we've been very good with the builders themselves in that we're approaching this as it's a community problem that needs a community solution."
Can Lakeway require testing before pouring the concrete?
As far as the industry can tell, the issue was limited to three separate shotcrete providers and potentially three to four different quarries.
There are hundreds of active lawsuits to figure out who started this problem.
Kilgore said because the issue is a multi-county problem, it might be a problem for the state Legislature to fix, but they are seeing what they can do as well.
"I would defer that to our city attorney, but we are looking to see what external licensing or testing requirements, a home-rule [the] city might be able to apply," Kilgore said. "But it's much more likely that it would be a state legislative fix given that it's larger commerce than just our small town."