With cracks spreading, Beacon Hill takes up the fight against ‘crumbling concrete’ destroying homes from the inside

MONSON — Lawmakers will consider this month establishing a fund to help homeowners afflicted with pyrrhotite, a natural mineral that if included in concrete reacts over time destroying homes and homeowners’ finances from within.

The state Senate included the Crumbling Concrete Assistance Fund in its version of the Affordable Housing Act. Bipartisan, the amendment is backed by State Sen. Peter Durant, R-Spencer, as well as Democrats Sen. Jacob Oliveira, D-Ludlow, state Sen. Adam Gomez, D-Springfield, and state Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton.

The amendment also creates a blue-ribbon panel of homeowners, engineers, insurers, concrete industry professionals and others to tackle the problem and may, according to advocates, result in Massachusetts joining a Connecticut program that’s already aided nearly 1,000 homeowners with repairs that can top $200,000 a home.

The state House and Senate have until the end of July, which is the end of the legislative session, to reconcile the two versions of the bill and send it to Gov. Maura T. Healey’s desk.

Up-to-date numbers aren’t available, but a state report from 2020 estimated Massachusetts would need $350 million to fix 2,000 homes with crumbling foundations.

Insurers do not cover the damage.

One possible solution would be for Massachusetts to join the insurance program Connecticut created in 2017 to deal with what’s been described as a slow-moving natural disaster, said Michelle Loglisci, founder of Massachusetts Residents Against Crumbling Concrete.

The Connecticut Foundation Solutions Indemnity Co. expected to soon surpass 1,000 total households. It’s funded by a $12 surcharge on certain Connecticut homeowners insurance policies that generates about $10 million a year and an expected $25 million, 10-year bond, according to the insurer Connecticut Foundation Solutions Indemnity Co.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts Residents Against Crumbling Concrete, which is combination support group and lobbying effort, gets emails and phone calls every day from homeowners who find the telltale spider web cracking spreading through basements and home foundations. The problem’s been found thus far in 40 Massachusetts cities and towns starting with Southwick, Longmeadow, East Longmeadow, Monson, Ware, Wales and Palmer.

Loglisci said she’s getting more reports from more towns.

“We are from the southern border with Connecticut to the New Hampshire border and moving east,” she said. “I’m being contacted by people in Abington, Dracut, Boxford, Winchendon.”

Connecticut has been dealing with contaminated concrete for about a decade longer than Massachusetts. According to news releases from Connecticut authorities, over the years a company called Becker Quarry in Willington sold the pyrrhotite-contaminated stone to the now defunct JJ Mottes concrete company from 1983 until 2017, when it agreed to stop.

At first, authorities looked at homes built only in those years and only within easy trucking distance from the Mottes quarry.

New reports from further away mean that not all the offending gravel came from Mottes, Loglisci said.

“There are definitely Massachusetts sources,” she said. “There is no way all this came from Connecticut.”

Last year, the state passed a law requiring that all quarries providing stone for concrete used in residential construction pass Massachusetts Department of Transportation tests as pyrrhotite free. Testing was to have begun this week, July 1, but concrete producers said this week that implementation has been pushed off until the beginning of 2025.

Loglisci said an absence of testing means some contractors could be pouring concrete with pyrrhotite right now.

The pyrrhotite isn’t apparent when the concrete is first poured. But over time it reacts with air and water. The reaction makes it expand, crack and crumble the concrete. The process is unstoppable. The offending concrete has to be dug out and replaced.

Loglisci and her husband found the damage in the basement of their home in Monson after reading about the phenomenon in The Republican seven and-a-half years ago.

They are not alone, but she knows there are more out there.

“There are people who won’t come forward because they want to sell their house, " she said.

The group, Massachusetts Residents Against Crumbling Concrete, marshaled 40 homeowners to lobby state senators in Boston last week. All were clad in red T-shirts.

Members have offered tours of their homes, showing damage to lawmakers including U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Springfield, who used federal tax policy to help make it easier for homeowners in Massachusetts and in Connecticut to write-off the cost of repairs. In 2020, he helped secure $1.5 million for the National Institute of Standards and Technology to conduct research on the effects of the mineral pyrrhotite on concrete aggregate.

Officials say the government has a role in preventing the loss of a loss of housing stock, homeowner investments and property tax revenue.

“This is essentially a natural disaster,” Durant said in a news release. “It is caused by the failing of a natural element and it was unforeseen by the concrete industry, builders and homeowners.”

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