Problems with grasses, weeds result from wet weather

With constant rain fueling rarely seen amounts of grasses and weeds, Colorado Springs police ask property owners to keep such vegetation at manageable levels.

A city ordinance limits the height of those plants to no more than nine inches. But many vacant lots and yards far exceed that height.

The Police Department’s code enforcement office said excess vegetation results in littering, infestations of insects and animals, and fuel for fires when dry weather arrives.

“It also can affect safety by blocking the view for drivers at corners and intersections,” Tom Wasinger of code enforcement said.

Wasinger said his six officers are overloaded with weed complaints this year, and overall the office has 130 more complaints than a year ago.

“Each officer has up to 100 outstanding cases,” he said. “We can’t keep up.”

Wasinger said violators are given two written notices and 20 days to address the matter. If they don’t, they can be cited and required to pay the cost of hiring a contractor to trim the vegetation.

“The cost on average is several hundred dollars,” he said. “Fortunately, about 70 percent of property owners comply before it gets to that point.”

Jeremy Scott, a resident, said he’s glad police are cracking down on violators.

“At some houses you do see weeds a couple of feet high,” he said. “It just looks terrible. Not just on the house but for everyone else around it.”

The proliferation of grasses and weeds have kept city and county work crews busy mowing and trimming.

One mower was trimming grass on the shoulders of Walker Road in northern El Paso County.

“We just try to keep the native grasses down,” said Max Kirschbaum, operations manager with the county’s public services. “Weeds aren’t so much a problem. It just so happens that we changed our mowing schedule this year to cover more ground, more efficiently.”

Kirschbaum believes his mowers will catch up soon and have a normal year overall.

Weeds are much more of an issue in the city, said Jay Hein, the city forester.

“If we stay wet through the summer we’ll be mowing well into November,” he said.

On Thursday, at the intersection of Constitution Avenue and Tutt Boulevard, one worker drove a mower through a patch of thick weeds while another worker picked up trash and used a trimmer on other weeds.

Those workers said they prefer the current wet, green climate to the past drought conditions that contributed to devastating wildfires in June of 2012 and 2013.