Canceled checks, pages from financial ledgers, water bills, office receipts and land records fluttered across the brown hills of eastern El Paso County this week, catching in barbed wire fences and landing in cattle pastures.

After a flurry of phone calls and meetings, property owners responsible for the litter on Friday began cleaning up what El Paso County Commissioner Amy Lathen called an “unprecedented pile of trash.”

Lathen, who represents the district where the site is located, said at a board meeting this week that she had gotten calls from neighbors complaining about the mess. “It’s just incredible out there.”

In an unusual move, the commissioners unanimously voted Tuesday to get an emergency court order to clean up the site. A day later, relatives of the owner, who is embroiled in a complex bankruptcy, volunteered to pick up the trash.

Much of the debris, which also included soggy furniture, clothing and toys, sat on a concrete pad adjacent to partially dismantled storage sheds. It was located near the intersection of U.S. Highway 94 and Log Road just west of Ellicott.

According to court records and local officials, the property is owned by several entities controlled by local developer Rodney J. Preisser, who is involved in four proceedings in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

Preisser could not be located for comment. His bankruptcy attorney, Lee Kutner, declined to provide specifics on the bankruptcy cases, which detail debts approaching $30 million.

Preisser, a rancher, farmer and developer, planned at one time to build more than 4,000 homes on the acreage, according to news reports. Many of the windblown documents, which date to the 1990s, have his name on them.

Colorado Springs attorney Ed Gleason represents a developer who was awarded judgments totaling nearly $3 million in December 2008 against two companies controlled by Preisser. Gleason received permission from a state district court judge in February to foreclose upon the property and sell it.

After getting approval for the sale, Gleason said individuals were seen dismantling the storage sheds. So he got a court order preventing anyone from selling, dismantling, moving, or hiding anything on the property.

A Preisser relative told county officials that the court order prevented him from doing the clean-up.  But Gleason disagreed. “The order did not stop trash removal,” he said. “We want to see the trash cleaned up as badly as the county.”

High winds this week only exacerbated the trash problem, said Ellicott resident Melisa Henley.

On Friday, she said, people arrived at the site and began loading the refuse into a large truck.

“The stuff was all over,” she said.—Call the writer at 476-4825.

Photo by Eileen Welsome, The Gazette