The road to Kathy and George Stultses’ Cascade home is a precipitous one. Guests are told to leave their cars at the bottom of the hill, where they walk up a steep path along a jagged canyon edge to reach the front door.

A small crevasse cuts through what remains of the unnamed road, a dirt driveway branching off U.S. Highway 24 that leads to four homes. Since April, after flood water coursed off the Waldo Canyon fire burn scar and sliced a drainage through the road, the Stults and their neighbors have been hiking home. And this summer, when the neighbors were given a federal grant to help them rebuild the private road, it came with a catch: Each of the homeowners would have to pitch in at least $4,000 to help fix it.

The federal grant, part of the Emergency Watershed Protection program, or EWP, is a blessing and a bane for El Paso County residents. The coveted grant is one of the few federal pots of money that can be used on private land, but ironically in El Paso County, that caveat makes it difficult to use. While the federal government will provide 75 percent of the more than $146,000 needed to fix the road, the remaining 25 percent must be provided by locals or the state. In Boulder, Larimer and Douglas counties, all of which have relied on EWP money, county government typically covers half of that 25 percent. But in El Paso County, officials staunchly refuse to invest public money on private land, even when lives and property are on the line.

Regardless, the county sees the private road as a critical mission – of the 18 projects flagged for EWP funds, it is the number one priority, beating out a city of Colorado Springs project in North Douglas Creek, as well as fixes to a Colorado Springs Utilities pipeline.

“It’s priority number one because of the lives it affects,” said Brian Olson, the sales and use tax administrator for the county.

The road has become a drainage off the Waldo Canyon burn scar with the potential to dump debris and sediment on the highway. Of the four homes on the road, the county approved the home at the top, now vacant, for a buyout so it can be torn down before it tumbles onto the houses below.

Now, with the homeowners of the home on the buyout list gone, five residents live in three remaining houses along the ravaged road, anxiously following every option officials consider to pay for road’s damage. The state of Colorado has agreed to pay half of the 25 percent match to fix the road, while the Coalition for the Upper South Platte (CUSP) is committed to helping with the project, most likely by providing volunteers to do some of the work.

But El Paso County won’t fund the project, and won’t provide engineering or other services, officials say.

In July, a Gazette investigation found that El Paso County has only twice pitched in county funds to help secure more than a dozen EWP grants in the past three years. In one case, when the county refused to help, Fountain farmer David Kinnischtzke was forced to try to fund a project on his land himself. But when Kinnischtzke couldn’t pay the multi-thousand dollar bill, the EWP grant was rescinded, and sent somewhere else.

While the county intends to help the Stultses and their neighbors find a way to pay for the road project, ultimately they face the same risk.

The county has relied on CUSP, a Teller County non-profit, to help provide money and work, something that non-profit’s executive director, Carol Ekarius, said it can do with limited capacity. Although EWP projects are on private land, their work is seen as being for the public benefit, a justification that other Colorado counties have used when putting taxpayer money towards the projects. But that argument doesn’t hold in El Paso County.

Ekarius has committed to help with the private road project near Cascade, but there are 10 other projects that need funds, some of which are four times the cost of the estimates for fixing the road, she said.

“This is one project that may be able to happen, but those other ones I really question,”she said.

Current conditions

The small canyon that has eaten into the road to the Stultses’ home is but one hazard that the area’s residents face. The home above the Stultses is one of four home buyouts approved by the county this summer. The county is awaiting some final federal approvals before it can buy the home and tear it down.

An assessment done by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which distributes the EWP funds, determined that post-fire flooding will eventually destroy the home and possibly send it crashing into its neighbors and the highway below. But the home can’t be demolished until the road is rebuilt. Meanwhile, the Stults and their neighbors live in fear of the next big rainstorm, and are desperately searching for someone to help pay for road fixes.

Matt Stys and Robin Guthrie, two of the Stultses neighbors, noticed that the flooding of their road was getting precipitously worse in early May, just as the Pikes Peak Region was beginning a month of record-breaking rainfall. Like the Stultses, Guthrie and Stys had dealt with years of flooding along their road, but they had never seen anything like this – water rushing down the road took out four mature pine trees, at least 12 to 15 feet tall, and exposed a gas line under the road. After that, the road was no longer safe to drive, and months later it is impossible to walk on.

After months of waiting, the homeowners were told last week about the state money for the project fix the road. But when county Flood Project Manager Pete Vujcich sat down with the neighbors on Aug. 18 to talk about their options for the remaining 12.5 percent – or a little over $18,000 – he admitted that the county is struggling to come up with ideas for resources. The residents must look to other agencies or foundations to help out, he said.

Vujcich said the county was trying to interest the Colorado Department of Transportation in helping fund road fixes, since debris off the burn scar could pour down the road and hit the highway.

“All of the debris coming out of this gulch lands on the apron on Highway 24,” Vujcich said.

But getting another government agency involved might slow the process, and the residents are running out of time. Since their project is the top priority in El Paso County, once contracts are signed, all work must be completed within 40 days, Olson said. The county also is on a timeline to take down the home slated for demolition – funds to buy the home must be used by March 2016, so the road must be fixed before then.

But even more than meeting financial deadlines, the residents are exhausted by their living situation, said Kathy Stults. All five current residents compete for parking spaces on the small swath of their drive that is usable. Once their cars are parked, the residents trek up steep paths they have cut up the mountainside to reach their homes. As they walk, they look down into the chasm that has become their road, filled with boulders and debris.

And, there are many steps to getting to the project organized. Besides securing funding, the residents will likely have to find someone to reassess potential costs, since the county expects that continuing damage to the road will add dollars to the project.. If they can’t secure funding to cover the 12.5 percent, then the residents will have to cover it themselves. But it’s unclear if the owner of the vacated house that’s to be torn down or the county would be responsible for that property’s share of the bill. The EWP funds will cover only the cost of rebuilding the road – there are no federal funds to pay for an engineer to redesign it.

Although Stults and her neighbors balk at the cost of making their road drivable, they are more fortunate than some property owners whose projects have been flagged for EWP, said Ekarius. Of the county’s EWP projects, at least two are estimated to cost $400,000, and two others are more than $200,000 and $350,000. Match amounts for each of those projects will likely be borne by one homeowner, not several, Ekarius said. Thus far, CUSP has committed to help only with the Cascade road project.

Despite the odds, Olson remains confident that the project will get done, and soon.

“It’s important that the road gets done,” he said. “It’s important for us to help the homeowners out, and by helping out we mean, how can we help find financing for them.”