Eagle Mountain homeowners ask city hall for help with sinking driveways

EAGLE MOUNTAIN, Utah — A group of Eagle Mountain homeowners went to city officials on Tuesday to voice concerns and ask for help with sinking walkways and driveways on their new homes.

“We started noticing settling around our driveway. It was probably around nine inches. You could see through the bottom of our driveway, like light,” explained homeowner Robert Cowles.

Cowles said he noticed the issues with his driveway about four weeks after moving into his home in the New Park community.

“Just a year later, it kept settling and kept cracking,” he said. “The first time, it hadn’t collapsed, which is why they just filled it.”

More than a dozen residents joined the hour-long meeting either online or in person with the mayor, city engineer, city attorney, and deputy city administrator.

“We have a lot of large pieces of concrete chipping away, large cracking, pieces falling off,” said homeowner Kalleen Pratt. “We’re not having any support system under our concrete because the ground has sunken away.”

There were three builders in the New Park development, but the homeowners told city officials that most of the concrete issues are with the approximately 40 homes built by Bach Homes.

The homeowners said the dirt below their driveways was not correctly compacted.

The city promises to help where it can and announced a meeting planned for Wednesday with the developer, Bach Homes, and city officials.

“Given that we are a super-high-growth community out here in Utah County, we want to make sure that residents are being heard, especially with some of these new developments,” said Tyler Maffitt, Eagle Mountain’s communications manager. “Take their concerns to the builder and make sure that the builder is really hearing those concerns.”

Bach Homes told KSL that they’ve worked with experts to devise a solution of pumping foam under the driveways.

“We’ve been working on it for months because we wanted to do it correctly,” said Brandon Ames, Vice President of Construction with Bach Homes.

Ames said crews are working as hard as possible to move through the subdivision and fix all the driveways. He said they would be working with each homeowner individually.

However, Cowles and Pratt worry the foam lifting is a temporary fix and that they’ll be stuck spending thousands of dollars later on to replace their driveways.