It was a mountainous success. Quite literally.

"I was expecting about 10 percent of the volume that people brought us," Pueblo Parks Director Steve Meier acknowledged Wednesday, just hours after the city closed the two free drop-off sites where residents were hauling their broken tree limbs from the heavy snowstorm of April 29.

Piles and piles of tree limbs were put through the city's wood chippers over the past two weeks. Trucks were pulling in to both the North Side and South Side drop-offs right up until the 7 p.m. closing time Tuesday.

"Anytime I went there, there were at least 20 trucks emptying loads," Meier said.

The result was a mountain of wood chips.

"It would probably cover a football field 50-feet deep," Meier said, in estimating the mulch created by the broken limbs.

Meier has a plan -- to till the wood chips into 5 acres of sandy soil around Veterans Park at Lake Minnequa.

"Do we have enough? Too little? I don't know. This is new territory of us," Meier said.

City staff is compiling the overtime reports and other expenses for the two-week limb project.

What concerns Meier now is reports of another cold front coming this way.

"I don't think we could handle another storm like the last one right now," he said. "We need some normal weather."

proper@chieftain.com