Teller County wildfire mitigation project also protects part of Colorado Springs’ water supply

TELLER COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) -- Crews are a fifth of the way through a roughly nine-month project to remove dead and dying trees from nearly 400 acres of U.S. Forest Service (USFS) land, near North Catamount Reservoir and below the summit of Pikes Peak.

The joint project started in September and involves the USFS, the Colorado State Forest Service (CSFS) and Colorado Springs Utilities (CSU).

Because the reservoir is part of the water supply for CSU, the project includes protecting it from future fire impacts that could cause debris flow and floods that could contaminate the reservoir, require time and expense for purifying, and even stop the use of water entirely.

Crews are using saws and a mastication machine to knock down trees; the machine then shreds them into smaller pieces and spreads them out over the forest floor.

Officials said that the project will thin the forest and keep any fire that may develop, on the ground and out of the trees where it would become more serious; the tree pieces also provide ground cover against erosion that also could contaminate the reservoir.

"About a year-and-a-half of prep and setup for the project," said Mike Till, projct manager for the CSFS. "It all starts with modeling, through computer programs, to determine the highest-risk areas. And then, that determines where we set our projects. We go on the landscape and walk the areas to determine what is accessible and operable."

Till said that the area was last mitigated around a century ago.

The project costs $1.5 million and is scheduled for completion next summer.