A $1.1 million federal grant will keep the Colorado Springs Fire Department battling unruly brush and grasses in an effort that barely scratches the surface of the massive, perpetual wildfire mitigation needed on Colorado Springs’ west side.

The funds, from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Colorado Division of Emergency Management, will go toward mitigating fire hazards on 512 acres in the 28,800 acre Wildland-Urban Interface, which hugs the area west of Interstate 25 from Fort Carson to the Air Force Academy and crosses into the Palmer Park area. There are more than 35,000 homes in that area, all at risk of being destroyed in a wildfire.

“It’s all we can do. We treat about 600 acres a year,” said Christina Randall, CSFD’s wildland mitigation manager.

Quail Lake park, part of Palmer Park, Cedar Heights, Garden Ranch, the old ski area in Old Broadmoore, Skyway Heights and The Village at Skyline retirement community will all see the removal of dead and dying brush, grasses and trees in the next three years as a result of the grant, Randall said.

The city has received similar grants four out of the last five years, partly because of the fire risk the west-side faces but also because citizens here have been willing to do their share in the mitigation work. In its grant applications, the department outlines the specific areas it will target with the funds.

“They recognize the work the homeowners are doing to help themselves,” Randall said Monday.

The city contracts the mitigation work to be done on public lands, but the grants require that homeowners and homeowners associations match 25 percent of the funds, either with actual dollars or manual labor on their own property.

The fire department tracks what work homeowners do to cut back trees and brush from houses and calculates the match.

Bryan Schroyer, political director of the Tea Party Express, speaks at a news conference in Anchorage, Alaska, on Monday, July 19, 2010. Tea Party Express was expelled from the National Tea Party Federation, a coalition of grass-roots political groups, for refusing to publicly rebuke and oust spokesman Mark Williams. Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Mark Thiessen