July, 2026
Latest REDI Reports
- Colorado’s 2021 Agricultural Labor Rights and Responsibilities Act (ALRRA) guarantees farmworkers access to healthcare providers but does not specify funding.
- In Colorado, 63% of primary care shortage areas are rural (HRSA, 2025) and spending on emergency room visits translates into an estimated $800 million a year in avoidable costs (CIVHC, 2015).
- Community development is moving beyond growth-based indicators toward multidimensional measures of well-being, but the proliferation of indices raises new questions about which outcomes align with community values.
- Applied to climate resilience, this framing reveals that prosperity and climate resilience indicators are only weakly related — and vary across space.
- May 2026
- Yvette Uwineza, Rebecca Hill, Jordan Suter
- Irrigation
- The lower Arkansas River Valley has experienced long-term declines in irrigated acreage as agricultural water has been transferred to other uses.
- Irrigated land represents a small share of total acreage in the region, but it supports higher-value crop production and local economic activity.
- Using an input-output model, we estimate that losing approximately 3,043 irrigated acres per year reduces regional economic activity by about $4.4 million to $4.9 million annually.
- April 2026
- Ray Miller, Tim Komarek
- Construction, Retail
- Construction for the I-70 Floyd Hill Project began in July 2023
- Clear Creek County retail sales are estimated to be roughly $24 million lower per year in FY2024-FY2025 than they would have been absent construction-related disruption.
- The number of operating retailers also appears lower than expected
- The effect is geographically uneven: Idaho Springs shows a measurable sales shortfall, while nearby Georgetown closely tracks its synthetic comparison.