The study, published in May 2025, sounded an alarm for communities surrounding well sites, and it got the attention of the , the state body that regulates the oil and gas industry.

The commission assembled a panel to review that report along with two others that looked at how exposure to oil and gas fracking impacted the people who live near well sites. They spent eight months reviewing and released in June.

However, the report did not reach any conclusions as to whether Colorado’s rule requiring oil and gas sites to be at least 2,000 feet from the nearest home is sufficient to protect people’s health. Nor did it make any policy recommendations, leaving the commission’s critics to wonder just how much evidence is needed to effect change.

“It¶¶Òőap a good first step. But what’s missing here is what is the action that will come from these findings and from putting time into this work,” said Guadalupe Solis, who served on the commission’s panel and is director of public health and advocacy at , a community health nonprofit that is active in Adams County.

Meanwhile, oil and gas industry representatives welcomed the review, saying it is important for Colorado regulators to follow science.

Carly West, executive director of the , said the review reinforced confidence in the state’s 2,000-foot setback rule.

“The evidence doesn’t support changing Colorado’s existing regulatory framework at this time,” she said.

While no policy changes will be forthcoming, the ECMC is accepting on its Public Health Studies Review until Aug. 7. Comments may be submitted online at

The commission’s review reflects the nature of scientific research and how different parties can interpret results differently, based on their interests. Long-term studies are complicated and nuanced, rarely producing definitive conclusions. And that can make it hard for policymakers to enact change even as critics grow antsy over increasing public-health concerns.

Energy and Carbon Management commissioner Trisha Oeth said during a Tuesday night public meeting that she convened the panel after seeing the reports and hearing from the community.

She recruited 14 people, including medical doctors, scientists, state regulators, an industry representative and public health experts from the community, to meet with the researchers and ask questions.

She wanted the commission to understand the science, but she never intended for the group to make policy recommendations.

“It does not change ECMC rules,” Oeth said. “It doesn’t make permit decisions, and it does not say that every health question has been answered. We certainly did not take that on.”

Instead, the panel recommended further study of the cumulative risks of oil and gas development and what it means for people who live near multiple well sites.

And that frustrated those who live near the sites and have been fighting for better public health protections.

‘We need to keep paying attention’

Laurie Anderson, a Colorado field organizer for , said she believes that Oeth had the right intentions when she called for a panel to review the three studies.

But Anderson said the commission, the oil and gas industry and the public are looking for a definitive study that will answer everyone’s questions as to how far apart oil and gas development and neighborhoods should be.

“They just so badly want to justify that 2,000-foot setback and that everything is going to be OK,” Anderson said.

Anderson started fighting oil and gas development after moving to Broomfield in 2015, and she said there is mounting evidence that fracking operations cause illnesses, both long-term and short-term.

She is growing tired of various government agencies waiting on a definitive study while continuing to issue drilling permits.

“They just continue to permit,” Anderson said. “Pretty much they’re going to frack anything in this area before they get the study that says, ‘Whoops, we weren’t as protective as we should have been.'”

During Tuesday night’s informational session on the health panel’s findings, Dr. Jacob Fox, a pulmonologist at UCHealth who studies respiratory disease and climate change, said the leukemia research was an “excellent study.” It showed an association between childhood leukemia and fracking, and it adds to a growing body of evidence that fracking emissions are associated with childhood cancer.

Still, it did not determine a safe distance for families with children, Fox said.

“It¶¶Òőap something as community members we need to keep paying attention to,” he said.

William Allshouse, one of the paper’s authors, said it’s nearly impossible to make a definitive link between fracking and acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which mainly affects children between the ages of 2 and 5. That’s because the scientists were not measuring the actual pollutants the children were exposed to.

That would require more air monitors and more money, he said.

“This is the best we can do with the available information to build that body of evidence,” Allshouse said. “We can’t say this pollutant is causing this cancer at this distance. If we’re going to continue to drill these large sites, they should be monitored to see what’s coming off the well pad to protect the people that live near them.”

Still, Allshouse said he was glad to see the ECMC look at the study.

“Obviously I would like to see things happen more quickly, but I’m glad it¶¶Òőap not getting lost either,” he said.

Examining three studies

The leukemia paper was one of three 2025 studies reviewed by the panel.

A by the Environmental Defense Fund and Colorado State University looked at the cumulative health risk of the Front Range’s ozone pollution and volatile organic compounds released by oil and gas sites. That study found acute health risks persist even when best management practices exist, and recommended that drilling and well construction stop during the summer ozone season, which stretches from June 1 to Aug. 31.

“There are limits to how broadly we can apply this finding,” Oeth said. “The sites studied had specific practices, and oil and gas practices were changing during the study period, which is very common in research. So ultimately this study helps us understand risk, but it certainly doesn’t answer every question for every site. No study can do that.”

A study by a CSU researcher measured air pollution and noise exposure at oil and gas development in northeastern Colorado’s . It was funded by the Health Effects Institute.

That study found that noise around wells is a concern and that benzene is the greatest air pollutant risk, but it did not identify any chronic health hazards during operations at the tested sites.

That result bolstered the industry’s arguments that a 2,000-foot setback is enough to protect nearby residents.

“One of the things the review reinforced was confidence in Colorado’s setback requirements,” said West, of the American Petroleum Institute. “The hope is always that the regulations you put into place achieve what you want to achieve.”

Oeth repeatedly reminded the audience at Tuesday’s meeting that the commission’s review did not settle every scientific question.

“It’s meant to help the public, help the ECMC as an agency and help our partner agencies better understand what these studies found, what they did not prove and where more work is needed,” she said.

Colorado needs to follow California’s lead and take a more comprehensive look at research that studies the connection between oil and gas drilling and public health, said Dr. Sara Carpenter, executive director of .

“What concerns me the most about the ECMC report is it¶¶Òőap not that thorough,” Carpenter said. “I think it was a great idea to convene a panel and say, ‘Let¶¶Òőap look at this.’ But it¶¶Òőap only three studies.”

In 2024, the California Geologic Energy Management Division released after a 15-member panel it commissioned reviewed thousands of studies on oil and gas production’s impact on public health and then picked 72 from across the United States and Canada to focus on.

The panel concluded that enough evidence existed to show that oil and gas operations cause respiratory diseases such as asthma and perinatal health problems such as low birthweights, preterm births and congenital abnormalities, Carpenter said. And California clearly stated that its findings would be used to make policy decisions. It reinforced the state’s 2022 decision to make setbacks a minimum of 3,200 feet.

More research has been conducted since that paper was released, and Colorado could have picked up the torch and added to the body of work, she said.

“If this bleeds into inaction at a policy level, that¶¶Òőap a problem,” Carpenter said. “Why reinvent the wheel? I think these guys reinvented a spoke.”

On a normal day, more than 2,000 workers in this rural northeast Colorado city fill assembly lines as they carve up cattle bound for butchers and supermarkets across the United States.

But on Wednesday, these laborers — many of whom are immigrants or refugees — instead lined Main Street, holding signs that read: “The steaks are high.”

The economic engine of Fort Morgan — a beef processing plant that employs more than 20% of the town’s population — has remained largely dark since Cargill halted production in April, then locked out its unionized workforce in May amid contentious contract negotiations.

The union, , says Cargill refuses to budge on minimal wage increases, even as the company reports staggering profits. Company representatives, meanwhile, contend that their proposal offers substantial benefits for its workers.

A lockout is an effort by bosses to block employees from working in the midst of a labor dispute. Once a rare phenomenon compared to a strike, lockouts have become a more common tool used by employers to gain leverage during negotiations.

Still, experts say, they remain exceedingly uncommon in the beef industry.

The impasse has left Cargill’s workers with no idea when — or if — they’ll be able to return to work. Fort Morgan officials, for their part, have already implemented budget cuts and frozen hiring as they brace for even steeper revenue declines, potential layoffs and a deeper existential question.

What happens to a factory town if the factory goes away?

“This is the type of thing that could be a generational event,” said last week. “These are things that stick with a community for a long time.”

Cargill representatives declined an interview request for this story, and instead directed The Denver Post to a company dedicated to the Fort Morgan negotiations.

“This was not a decision we made lightly,” the company wrote of the lockout. “Cargill remains committed to reaching an agreement through continued good-faith negotiations with the union.”

How the lockout began

Fort Morgan is an agricultural community of 11,000, about 80 miles northeast of Denver.

It’s a diverse and largely poor population, where more than half of its residents identify as Hispanic and the .

Cargill, for many in northeast Colorado, represents the best option for making a decent living.

The company, headquartered in Minnesota, is the , employing more than 155,000 people across 70 countries. Its annual revenue:

Cargill, on its , acknowledges the “vital role” the company plays in supporting the local economy, saying it “strives to be the employer of choice” in northeastern Colorado.

The facility’s massive 85-acre complex — including a dozen buildings and 630,000 square feet of production space — sits on the outskirts of town east of Main Street. The plant dates back to 1966 and was acquired by Cargill in 1987.

The current stalemate traces back to February, when the union and the company began negotiating a new contract.

The parties traded proposals, with Cargill offering an estimated $33.4 million investment in Fort Morgan employees. Year one wages, under the company’s proposal, would range from $24.20 to $32.10 per hour, depending on the job and experience. Union officials, though, said this would only equate to a $2.15-per-hour increase over five years.

Cargill also touted significant jumps since 2018 to its base pay, average wages and annual payroll.

In April, amid the heated negotiations, the company stopped bringing cattle to the facility, though workers continued to receive their pay. The following month, 90% of union workers rejected Cargill’s deal, citing inadequate wage increases and other health and safety concerns. The union, however, never held a strike vote.

On May 20, Cargill locked the plant’s doors, saying the company “cannot operate the facility safely and responsibly amid continued uncertainty of a potential work stoppage.” A sudden shutdown, , could create risks related to food safety, animal welfare and extensive food waste.

“Our goal remains to reach an agreement that allows the facility to return to normal operations safely and productively as soon as possible,” Cargill officials said.

The Teamsters say the speed at which Cargill barricaded the factory showed that they had “full intention to lock us out.”

There have been no conversations of substance since, said Chris Suazo, a Local 455 business agent, though the two sides did meet on June 30.

Cargill said it would support a meeting with a mediator, while Suazo said the union remains open to negotiating. Still, the sides remain far apart.

Lockouts, once unheard of, have in recent years represented a significant portion of work stoppages as federal courts and the National Labor Relations Board have expanded their permissible use, said Moshe Marvit, an attorney and former National Labor Relations Board employee.

“At a time when the most well-known tools of labor organizing have already been undermined by aggressive — and too frequently unlawful — anti-union tactics by employers, this enhancement of management power is designed to weaken the bargaining power of unions, and lead to a further decline in the earnings and benefits available to hard-working families,” he said.

The dispute comes amid tumultuous times for beef producers nationwide.

The U.S. cattle herd is at a , driving up beef prices. Cargill has said it is currently losing hundreds of millions of dollars in its beef operations.

The Fort Morgan lockout came just two months after thousands of workers at a JBS meatpacking plant in Greeley went on strike over wage disputes and unsafe working conditions. The two sides reached an agreement three weeks later.

Industry watchers say production interruptions, such as the one in Fort Morgan, are unlikely to drastically impact the U.S. beef market since facilities nationwide are already running well below capacity. That means Cargill can easily transfer cattle destined for Colorado to other plants.

“Things like this can cause regional issues, such as producers seeing increased costs and headaches, but for the industry as a whole, it’s not an end-of-the-world scenario,” said Jaime Luke, an assistant professor at Michigan State University’s Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics.

In fact, Cargill’s operational costs actually go down when the company can run its plants at closer to capacity, said Jennifer Martin, an associate professor in the College of Agricultural Sciences at Colorado State University.

Workers left in limbo

Cargill workers have been left in an uneasy limbo since the lockout.

They’re still getting paid $1,250 per week from the union’s “out of work” benefit fund, though it’s not clear how long that will last.

Instead of handling cow carcasses all day, they’re picketing along Main Street and outside the plant. On Wednesday, laborers chatted in small groups, looked at their phones and milled around a downtown park.

“The company has a real next-man-up mentality,” said Michael Torres, a supervisor at the plant. “There’s a real lack of empathy for the workers.”

Even though they’re still getting paid, Torres worries about not having health insurance, which stopped June 1.

Next to him, Robert Gasca pondered his future.

He’s been with Cargill for 17 years, taking an hour-long shuttle ride every day from Greeley.

Gasca’s mother died when he was young, leading the teen to drop out of high school. He earned enough at Cargill to allow his sister to graduate — an accomplishment he considers his proudest moment.

But the job has come with a cost. Gasca showed disfigurements on his hands from operating a meat hook all day and recalled once when a knife sliced through his leg “like butter.” It’s a physically demanding, intense gig, with few breaks.

“Religiously, God told me to leave this place years ago,” he said.

Local businesses in town expressed their support for the union members, with some putting signs in the windows that proclaimed they “stand with Cargill Teamsters.”

A few business owners said sales have dropped since the lockout, while others lamented the lack of parking when workers picket downtown.

“At first, we were worried about the unknown,” said Kim Filener, who works at a women’s clothing store in town. “But everyone has been respectful and things have been pretty calm. We know Cargill is big for this town and we support our workers.”

At the end of the day, townspeople said, they just want a resolution to end the stalemate.

‘Plan for the worst’

As workers mull their fate, the city of Fort Morgan does the same.

Not only does Cargill employ a significant percentage of the population, but the company also represents the city’s largest water and electricity customer. Since the lockout, utility usage from the plant has plummeted, said Nation, the city manager.

Sales tax receipts have remained stable so far, since workers are still getting paid, but officials are worried about a hit there, too, if laborers stop getting paychecks.

Nation earlier this month, saying all municipal departments needed to cut 5% from their current budgets and institute an immediate hiring freeze.

The 2027 prognosis is even worse. If Cargill doesn’t come back online, the city would lose $15 million of its $100 million annual budget, Nation said. As a result, all departments next year face 15% cuts, which would likely result in layoffs.

“We need to plan for the worst in this case,” he said.

The city manager has been in close touch with officials in Lexington, Nebraska, which plant that employed 30% of its total workforce. In that case, the move resulted in the loss of 7,000 jobs, $3.3 billion in statewide economic impact and $2.7 million in lost sales tax revenue for the county.

Nation thinks about his father, who worked in the oil business. The family talked for decades about the oil bust in the 1980s and the economic devastation that it caused Colorado. If Cargill doesn’t reopen its Fort Morgan plant, he said, it would cause similar ripples through the community.

“Looking at the dollars and cents, the trickle-down effect is scary,” he said. “But these are the cards we’ve been dealt.”

The Čč·ÉČč°ù»ć±đ»ćÌęłÙłó±đ a $268,428 grant in the fall of 2024. The funds were slated for a project teaming up CU media and communication students with information science students to create educational social media content about artificial intelligence.

Scholars well-versed in communication would learn more about the complicated nature of AI. Information science students would learn how to become better science communicators. And social media users would benefit from accurate, compelling information.

That was the goal.

But Fiesler was among the legion of academics whose research was . The grant terminations stalled or stopped progress on scholarship that the Trump administration deemed out of alignment with its mission — largely, research surrounding , misinformation and climate change.

“The project just died, and my assumption is the reason it got cut was the abstract had the word ‘misinformation’ in it,” Fiesler said. The Trump administration focused on canceling grants across the country , stating this kind of research could infringe on protected speech rights.

In Colorado, more than $375 million in grants from the National Science Foundation, , and the were disrupted — either terminated and reinstated through , or axed altogether — in the first 18 months of the Trump administration, according to the .

Some of the terminated grant money has since been reinstated, and some , but Colorado academics say the damage is far-reaching beyond the individual grants. When federal money dried up, some schools let researchers go. Others chose to leave, unwilling or unable to deal with the months of financial uncertainty.

The loss in funding hurt researchers’ careers and stunted young scholars from entering the profession, experts say. But, in the bigger picture, in rescinded research dollars across the nation blighted scientific progress and innovation for years to come, academics said.

“The U.S. has for a long time been a respected source of innovation in knowledge generation, and that¶¶Òőap what we’re losing,” said Lynn Schofield Clark, a professor at the who lost a $150,000 grant last year. “That’s something we can’t get back.”

Getting ‘DOGE’d’

More than 170 grants were disrupted in 2025 among Colorado research institutions CU Boulder, DU, Colorado State University and the Colorado School of Mines, according to those schools.

At CU Boulder, a $1.2 million National Science Foundation grant intended to reduce racially biased beliefs through teaching human genetics in high school biology was axed. At CSU, a $6 million grant studying the growth of artificial joints to help osteoarthritis patients met its demise. At Mines, $105,000 toward increasing degree completion for underrepresented students in STEM was terminated.

DU’s Schofield Clark, a journalism and media studies professor, lost a grant from the for her work incorporating local Chicano history into common curriculum classes at the university, so all students had the chance to learn Chicano history in general education courses.

“We wanted to see if we could look into resources and generate new resources and teach our students by enabling them to have direct contact with the cultural arts scene, the history scene and hear from people who had an impact on shaping this area,” Schofield Clark said.

The program, which reached about 350 DU students, kicked off in the spring semester of 2023. The grant funding allowed Schofield Clark to take DU students to local Chicano festivals, the History Colorado museum and music events, and to bring Chicano community members to campus to tell their stories directly to students.

It was going so well that last year, Schofield Clark and two of her graduate students went to a Chicano studies academic conference to present their work. At the conference, they learned their grant funding had been “DOGE’D,” as Schofield Clark and other researchers called the federal funding terminations.

The , or DOGE, was one of Trump’s first initiatives during his second term, initially spearheaded by Elon Musk. The initiative, which , was “maximizing governmental efficiency and productivity.” The department is responsible for mass federal layoffs and the termination of more than 15,800 federal grants across agencies totaling about $49 billion, .

Many of those terminations targeted grants associated with marginalized populations — like researching how a new drug might affect women or how to better recruit and retain students of color in science programs.

Schofield Clark’s vision of bringing the Chicano community to DU students put a target on her back. The professor recalled receiving a termination letter from the federal government with a “very insulting” tone similar to “we are rescinding this grant and giving it to people who are more worthy,” she said.

“That definitely derailed things,” Schofield Clark said.

The program slowed. The university funded what it could, Schofield Clark said.

At DU, 21 grants were terminated under the Trump administration, though all but five have been reinstated, said Corinne Lengsfeld, the university’s vice provost for research and graduate education.

Still, Lengsfeld said research expenditures at the university have decreased “significantly,” about 20%, during Trump’s second term, as faculty continue to face long delays in federal grant approvals and ongoing uncertainty.

“Because of all this, we are not going to be a top, intellectually rich country soon, and that is concerning,” Lengsfeld said.

Schofield Clark’s grant could now be reinstated.

After losing in court following the agency’s termination of more than 1,400 grants, the National Endowment for the Humanities started offering terminated grant recipients the

Schofield Clark hopes to receive the rest of her funding and continue the work. She wants to share her history curriculum with other universities so they can implement similar programs — a step she wasn’t able to take after the funding loss.

While her own funding loss was frustrating, Schofield Clark noted broader implications. Within the past decade, she said, researchers have contended with the reality that so much academic scholarship has advanced through a white, Western lens.

“We’ve had a lot of knowledge gaps, and we need to address those because that¶¶Òőap part of who we are as a country,” Schofield Clark said. “This was a major disruption and a major slap in the face for a large population of people who have every right to have more knowledge about their history and health and everything.”

‘The disruptions have been real’

Full grant terminations have not been the only hit to academic research under the Trump administration.

Rescinded grants that ultimately were reinstated through court challenges left universities in limbo long enough to either force them to lay off researchers or cause frustrated faculty to quit or go elsewhere, said Cass Moseley, CSU’s vice president for research.

“A lot of faculty are trying to either pivot to slightly adjacent work that¶¶Òőap maybe more fundable for the federal government or seeking non-federal sources, although we know non-federal funding cannot replace federal money,” Moseley said.

CSU saw nearly 70 grants disrupted since last year, totaling more than $84 million, according to university tracking. Many of those were climate-related or tied to diversity, equity, and inclusion, Moseley said.

Even so, Moseley said there are huge delays in grant approvals and more complicated processes to apply for and receive federal funding, straining a nation that was once a thriving research enterprise.

“The disruptions have been real,” said Massimo Ruzzene, CU Boulder’s vice chancellor of research and innovation.

Ruzzene is worried about the hit to workforce development. Young academics just starting their research careers were seeing their work halted by funding cuts before they even got started, Ruzzene said.

“This impacts the training of a new generation of scientists and scholars,” Ruzzene said.

Postdoctoral scholar Alice Taylor was thrilled to be hired to work on a DU project researching anti-authoritarian movements led by women and LGBTQ+ activists worldwide.

In April of 2025, the $486,000 National Science Foundation grant that funded Taylor’s position was terminated, and the emerging scholar was left scrambling to pay rent.

“There’s a reason why authoritarian regimes go after universities first,” said Taylor, who is now faculty at DU. “What¶¶Òőap happened with Trump and DOGE is straight from authoritarian playbooks. Universities have the potential to stand up and be leaders and defend what universities are best at: freedom of speech, having robust faculty unions, high-quality, critical education.”

A new threat

The Trump administration is trying to assert even more control over academic research as the proposes — a framework governing how federal agencies administer funds.

Colorado academics, , spoke of the overhaul in cataclysmic terms, noting the proposed guidelines would politicize research and innovation in a way that would be hard to pull back.

The proposal would authorize federal agencies to change or cut awards based on shifting presidential priorities and take away existing appeals processes, academic experts said.

“Those terms and conditions reflect the president¶¶Òőap agenda in some ways that are quite hard for universities,” Moseley said.

The ⁠Trump administration said the changes are intended to improve transparency, accountability and oversight for federal grants.

Meanwhile, the the “harmful” proposal would be “extremely disruptive to the lifesaving research that the federal government funds and oversees.”

These overarching observations about the federal government’s impact on life-saving, innovative, revolutionary academic research are what most concerned the Colorado academics who spoke to The Denver Post.

“The loss in funding, of course, will have immediate operational impacts for students and researchers,” Ruzzene said. “It will also have scientific impacts as researchers cannot do their work. It will have workforce impacts. There will be less innovation — less products, less patents, less industry partnerships. This erosion will be difficult and take a long time to rebuild. That will have an impact on our ability to be prosperous economically as a nation, to fund careers for our children, to have scientific progress.”

“While we are in challenging times, we need to keep focus on what we do best, which is creating knowledge and transferring that knowledge to our students,” Ruzzene said.

Sheryl Magzamen, an epidemiologist and professor of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences at Colorado State University, is also curious about how, if at all, poor air quality affects dogs. That¶¶Òőap why she is helping lead a study intended to find out .

“There’s this huge gap in understanding what this means for animal health,” Magzamen said. “A lot of our recommendations right now are based on human health recommendations, and part of our question is, does that make sense given that dogs usually spend more time outside than people do? And their lives aren’t as long, so do we see that health effects have more meaning because their lifetimes are shorter?”

Leveraging the Denver-based Morris Animal Foundation’s , Magzamen and her co-researchers Craig Webb, Danni Scott and Colleen Duncan will evaluate whether smoke and specifically the chemical PM2.5 lead to higher rates of cancer in the breed or ultimately shorten their lives by causing other diseases.

The Golden Retriever Lifetime Study, started in 2012, seeks to identify nutritional, environmental, lifestyle and genetic risk factors for cancer and other diseases in dogs. It has enrolled more than 3,000 dogs located across the U.S., Magzamen said, which should give researchers a better understanding if the type of smoke also plays a role in canine illness.

Colorado dogs, for example, are more likely to be exposed to smoke from forest fires, whereas dogs in the southeastern U.S. are more prone to exposure from grassland fires and other types of prescribed burns, Magzeman said.

“Depending on what burns and how hot it burns and what other things burn around it changes the chemical composition of that smoke,” she said. “We are really trying to understand what this means not only for us, but for our canine companions as well.”

Results from her study won’t be published until at least next year. Until then, Magzamen said owners can use themselves as a barometer for their dog’s safety in smoky conditions. Humans and canines have many of the same organs in their cardiovascular and respiratory systems, she said, so “if you don’t feel good, you can assume your dog might not feel good either.”

On days when the air quality index is “unhealthy” for people to breathe (an AQI between 151 and 200), Magzamen advised limiting your dog’s activity and exercise. High-intensity activity, like runs or big hikes, should also be reduced when the air quality is less than ideal, she said. Senior dogs could be considered among “sensitive groups,” like children and individuals with lung diseases, who are at risk when the air quality index hits 100 or more, she added.

Play inside or out? How to manage Denver’s poor air quality with kids

Air pollution has been linked to in humans, including increasing the risk of premature birth, causing or worsening lung and heart disease, and shortening lives, according to the American Lung Association.

Magzamen and her co-researchers hope to understand if AQI readings are transferable to dogs or if there should be separate guidance for animals and individual breeds, such as French bulldogs and pugs that have shorter snouts and more difficulty breathing. As a dog lover, she also hopes her work can help other canine-loving families lead happy, long lives. Her golden good boy, Comet, recently died from cancer at 6 years old.

“It definitely gives me pause to think about what this means as Comet was out and about on his two walks a day. When he was healthy and doing well, these are days that we know smoke was in the air. I'm not saying that it¶¶Òőap causal, but it also makes me think, did this potentially have impacts on his diagnosis and ultimately his death?” she said.

By early Wednesday evening, when Denver had finished counting the bulk of its ballots, Kiros — who was not alive when DeGette, 68, was elected to her first of 15 terms — led the congresswoman by more than 13 percentage points.

The 29-year-old lawyer marshalled grassroots support and an array of favorable forces to dislodge a fixture of Denver’s political scene — and upend the shadow primary that had quietly awaited DeGette’s retirement, with aspiring successors biding their time. Kiros’ campaign, working with the Denver chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, out-organized DeGette repeatedly, nearly keeping her off the ballot in the spring and then overcoming DeGette’s hefty financial advantage in the campaign’s final weeks.

The campaign harnessed — or at least rode — the discontent that Democratic voters have expressed for their longtime party officials, including with her full-throated support of the Palestinian people over Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip. The congressional district’s Democratic electorate, dominated by Denverites, turned out in numbers that eclipsed nearly every prior primary race in DeGette’s career.

“Melat ran a compelling campaign with a vision about what America can be and should be, rather than being this politician that constantly tells voters no,” said Deep Singh Badhesha, a Denver DSA member who worked with Kiros’ campaign. “… It¶¶Òőap something you’re seeing all across the nation. It¶¶Òőap that do-nothing Democrats aren’t good enough anymore.”

Meanwhile, DeGette, who had batted away the occasional primary challenger over the years, appeared flat-footed.

She highlighted her progressive bona fides and her experience. But her pitch — that she was a proven progressive who’d managed one of President Donald Trump’s impeachments and would have seniority should the Democrats retake Congress this fall — failed to counteract the wave that Kiros had caught.

“DeGette is liberal, and particularly had done a lot of work on reproductive rights,” said Paul Teske, a professor at the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Public Affairs who had Kiros as a student in one of his classes. “I wouldn’t paint her too far in the center, though Melat was certainly to the left. But the enthusiasm gap, the age gap and the willingness to fight Trump (put Kiros over).”

In a video DeGette released around noon Wednesday to concede the race, she congratulated Kiros for her win. She said she would make the most of her final six months in office.

“Frankly, this was not the way I would have wanted to end my career in politics, but I’m proud of my accomplishments,” she said. “… I strive every day to be the quintessential legislator, passing bills of my own design and collaborating with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to make a better society for all Americans.

“Sadly, in our toxic political climate, there seems to be little room for that type of politician anymore.”

Decisive defeat amid high turnout

When DeGette trailed at the first ballot drop Tuesday evening, her defeat appeared certain. By Wednesday, the win had turned into a rout.

“In the cold light of morning, 10 points — that almost feels like there aren’t many tactical or strategic decisions the campaign could have made that would have changed the outcome,” Ian Silverii, a political consultant whose firm briefly worked for DeGette in the spring, said on a livestream of his podcast Wednesday morning. The margin later grew more.

The victory propels Kiros to the November election in solid-blue Denver against a Republican nominee, Christy Peterson, who’s little known and hasn’t reported fundraising.

Kiros, who is also a member of the Denver DSA chapter, rode the same waves that propelled similar candidates elsewhere. A week before her victory, three New York City congressional candidates endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their primaries.

Kiros received the Denver DSA endorsement earlier this year, and her campaign and the organization later became “totally bound up” in each other, said Susie Ramsey, the co-chair of Denver DSA and a Kiros campaign staffer. The Denver group modeled its approach for Kiros — training field leads who could run their own canvassing efforts in specific parts of the district — after Mamdani’s approach in New York.

But at the time, the DSA’s electoral muscle in the state had atrophied, she said. The Denver DSA has endorsed some Denver City Council candidates, with a handful winning in recent elections, but most of its council slate lost in 2023.

Ramsey said that, initially, she thought Kiros’ campaign was a long shot but, if nothing else, it could help build left-wing power in the city.

Who is Melat Kiros? What to know about the 29-year-old democratic socialist who ousted U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette.

Then Kiros and DSA organizers nearly kept DeGette off of the ballot at the party’s nominating assemblies in March, where the incumbent barely cleared the 30% viability threshold of support among party delegates. The process was a proving ground for DSA’s newfound organizing, and its success helped rally members and convince them — and Kiros — that they could topple DeGette.

Crucially, it also earned the campaign invaluable media attention.

“It built our muscle,” Ramsey said.

By the end of the campaign, the Denver DSA’s membership had grown from around 1,350 to nearly 1,800 members, Ramsey said. Kiros’ campaign had 1,800 volunteers — half of whom, Ramsey estimated, were DSA members.

The DSA-backed success in New York, Ramsey said, “is showing us what the horizon is, and Denver is showing you how we can compress the timeline.”

In a memo distributed Wednesday, the Colorado Polling Institute pointed to an August survey that found that more than half of Denver Democratic voters had a favorable view of socialism. Among voters under the age of 35, 65% had a favorable view of socialism, compared to 35% who were supportive of capitalism.

Annie Orloff, a spokeswoman for Kiros’ campaign, also attributed some of the campaign’s success to its association with the DSA.

“Socialism is very popular here. Or at least a little more popular than capitalism,” Orloff said. “I think (Denver DSA) will keep growing. You could see at the watch party — at all of our canvasses — that people are so hungry to be a part of a community that is fun, that is also fighting for working people.”

'A rejection of the old guard'

But Kyle Saunders, a political science professor at Colorado State University, disagreed.

“Kiros’ victory reads as more a rejection of the old guard than a conversion to socialism,” he wrote in . “Downtown Denver is young, educated, full of renters and mostly socialist-adjacent at best. Many of those voters are tired of the establishment, and the DSA was the only outfit organized enough to give that feeling a home.”

How amenable Denver voters are to the values of democratic socialism may be less relevant than how much work Kiros' campaign put into organizing, however. Volunteers knocked on 115,000 doors and made more than half a million phone calls, Ramsey said.

“To overcome the millions of dollars in dark money, we were able to have real conversations with folks across the city, and I think that made a real difference,” Orloff said.

DeGette’s campaign spent $1.2 million, while outside supporters dropped more than $2.3 million in the past month to bolster the congresswoman’s chances. Much of that support came from Pro-Choice Majority Action, which had been funded in part by groups supporting Israel.

Those ads, some of which attacked Kiros for “recently moving to Denver,” appeared to turn some voters away from DeGette, Orloff said. A child of immigrants, Kiros was born in Ethiopia but moved to Denver with her family as a baby.

“It¶¶Òőap anecdotal, but we had people show up to canvas after seeing some of those ads,” she said.

Kiros shocked Colorado’s political world when she secured her place on the ballot by winning the county assembly earlier this year. Then, a few couple weeks later, DeGette only narrowly landed on the ballot herself.

“She also fell asleep. (DeGette) did not take this as seriously as she should have,” said Jason Bane, who operates the Democratic political website ColoradoPols.com. “The combination of anger about Trump and anger about older elected officials — and DeGette’s general absence in the district — made this a perfect opportunity for someone like Kiros.”

Ramsey said that by the time DeGette started taking the race seriously, “it was too late for her.” Her campaign and the DSA had already shifted gears from the assembly process to the full campaign.

“We almost pushed her off the ballot, you would think that would wake her up,” Ramsey said.

DeGette spoke only through her video and statement Wednesday. A campaign spokesman said the congresswoman wasn’t available for an interview.

Teske, the CU Denver professor, said it¶¶Òőap hard for candidates like DeGette to make their case to voters when they’re in the minority party in the House.

“I imagine when you've been elected 15 times over 30 years, you get a little complacent maybe,” Teske said, noting that DeGette has fended off challengers from the left before.

Of his former student, he recalls telling Kiros how difficult it would be to unseat DeGette. Ultimately, he said Kiros won with a “smart, politically savvy” campaign that tapped into a national political atmosphere.

Staff writer Nick Coltrain contributed to this story.

But when legalized sports betting debuted in Colorado in 2020, another tradition took hold at those Lot W tailgates: sports gambling. Now, when the family assembles before the home games, they discuss parlays and point spreads almost as much as they talk about Bo Nix and Sean Payton.

On a warm January day, while partying outside their late-model Winnebago painted with blue-and-orange stripes, they figured out the wagers they planned to put on the Broncos’ final regular-season game, against the , and other NFL matchups.

They weren’t alone. Sports betting and fantasy football dominated conversations throughout the parking lots as tailgaters speculated how much they might win.

The gameday bets — putting a little money on the line — are all part of the fun of football Sundays, said Joe Canales, a family friend who joined the tailgate.

“We all get excited when somebody wins,” he said.

Legalized sports betting is changing the face of sports and fandom in Colorado as people wager billions annually on games and on the athletes who play them. In the six years since voters approved Proposition DD, the state’s gamblers have wagered more than $30.6 billion on sports, averaging $425 million a month.

For years, sports betting was taboo within the professional leagues as commissioners and team owners kept gambling at arm’s length for fear of scandal. Now, leagues and teams promote their partnerships with gambling companies. Fans watching games on TV are inundated with sports-betting ads, and those in the stands can see gambling companies’ names painted on courts and fields.

Bettors often care more about individual athletes’ performances than about their hometown teams as they wager on how many three-point shots a basketball player will make or how many touchdowns a quarterback might throw, multiple people told The Denver Post. Athletes feel the pressure, whether it’s because they receive angry messages on social media from people who lose money or from gamblers seeking an edge from inside information.

Legalized gambling is also threatening the integrity of sports, with fans fearing athletes, coaches and referees may alter calls or plays to influence the outcomes of bets. Just before the NCAA’s March Madness basketball tournament kicked off, Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, that found a majority of Americans — almost 60% — believe sports betting affects the integrity of college basketball.

“It¶¶Òőap ruining the relationship between a player and their sport, and it¶¶Òőap ruining the relationship between fandom and the athletes,” said Montee Ball, a former Broncos running back who leads the , which focuses on athletes’ mental health.

All of that is forcing coaches and administrators to incorporate gambling and mental health awareness into athletes’ training, with education now starting as early as high school for athletes in Colorado.

In the past six years, sports betting scandals have rocked professional and college leagues, ensnaring Colorado athletes such as hometown basketball legend Chauncey Billups, who was implicated last fall as an unnamed co-conspirator in a rigged NBA betting scheme.

This story, which examines how gambling is changing sports, is the third in The Post’s series about legalized sports betting’s impact on Colorado. The first story looked at an alarming rise in gambling addiction, while the second installment covered how sports wagering’s tax revenue benefits water projects in Colorado.

Sports betting has existed in America as long as athletes have laced up their high-top sneakers. In the past, gamblers sought bookies in secret to place bets, collect winnings and pay debts. Gamblers turned to offshore sportsbooks once the internet became accessible.

Now, sports fans place bets from their phones, often in the middle of games, thanks to a that overturned the , allowing states to set their own laws regulating sports betting. Colorado acted quickly, putting the question to a ballot referendum in November 2019; voters allowed sportsbooks to open for business in May 2020.

And, almost as quickly, Denver’s professional sports teams announced business deals with gambling companies.

An evolving relationship

Just a little more than a decade ago, the was so antagonistic toward sports gambling that the league’s commissioner threatened to suspend Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo over his plans to attend that was being organized by a company he owned.

The NFL prohibited players from participating in any event sponsored by a gambling-related company, and the league so narrowly defined gambling that fantasy football was included, even though those games pit people against each other rather than the house, which keeps the profits.

Players are still not allowed to bet on the NFL, play daily fantasy games or visit sportsbooks during football season. But the league and team owners have embraced sports betting.

Denver’s major sports teams are reluctant to talk about those new business relationships, with every professional team as well as the University of Colorado Boulder and its football coach Deion Sanders declining The Post’s interview requests.

The Broncos and the Colorado Rockies sent prepared statements via email, declaring that they follow the rules while protecting their players and the games’ integrity.

“In compliance with the NFL’s gambling policy, all members of our organization undergo comprehensive training on the subject,” the statement from Broncos spokesman Patrick Smyth said. “For players, this includes mandatory in-person education as well as in-season communication and other resources from the team and league.”

The Broncos inked their first business deal with sports-betting app in June 2020 — one month after Colorado’s sportsbooks opened for business.  The team also partnered that summer with , which opened a now-shuttered luxury lounge inside the stadium, and . Today, BetMGM is the team’s lone sports-betting partner.

The Colorado Rockies partner with Denver-based , allowing the company to have a sign on the outfield wall.

also partners with bet365 as a sponsor for the and . That , which allows bet365’s logo to be placed under the Avalanche’s ice and on the Nuggets’ baseline, is in place through the 2028-2029 season.

Courtney Brunious, an assistant professor at the , said he was not surprised Denver’s teams did not want to talk about their business relationships with gambling companies.

“There’s still a certain stigma attached to it,” said Brunious, who teaches sports business. “It’s still — I don’t want to say an uneasy relationship — but it’s an ongoing and evolving partnership. It’s not necessarily something they want to put a spotlight on.”

The gambling companies are eager to associate with professional sports because it puts their names in front of enthusiastic fans, Brunious said. The teams benefit from sports gambling because people who bet money on games are more likely to watch them on television, boosting coveted audience numbers.

The sure thing, Brunious said, is that those relationships will not dissolve. There’s too much money at stake.

“It’s not going away,” he said. “It¶¶Òőap going to require adjustments to make sure all parties are protected as much as possible.”

The sports teams and betting companies are entwined with each other’s success.

Every decision a team makes is analyzed by gamblers and can move a betting line up or down, changing the fortunes of those who wager and those who make money off of it.

When the Los Angeles Rams on June 1 traded for reigning defensive player of the year Myles Garrett, that team became Las Vegas oddsmakers’ favorite to win the next Super Bowl. Meanwhile, the odds for Garrett’s former team, the Cleveland Browns, dropped to 200-to-1 from 115-to-1, according to a news release from Circa Sports.

Peter Jackson, the chief executive officer of , FanDuel’s parent company, explained in a February how “player narratives” impact his company’s revenue. When the NFL’s most popular players are not in the playoffs, the fans bet less money, he said.

“There was one player we had on our books over the course of the year that had more money bet on him in the course of the season than the Pats did,” Jackson said, without naming the player. “This player stuff is super important, and when we don’t have those key players making the playoffs or the Super Bowl, it really does impact player engagement and betting volumes.”

Pressure and harassment

Players are well aware that fans’ interest in their performance is more intense when money is on the line.

They already face performance anxiety because players are super competitive and want to win, said Ball, who played for the Broncos during the 2013 and 2014 seasons. Professional athletes also know that an injury or a bad game can cost them playing time and shorten their careers. Now, they also have pressure from fans who want to win money by betting on whether they throw a touchdown pass or catch an interception.

“The athletes can’t escape it,” Ball said. “They shouldn’t have to turn everything off because John is screaming on Twitter, ‘I hope you tear your ACL.’ ”

Athletes in all sports are reporting an increase in harassment since sports betting became legal.

Nuggets guard Bruce Brown brought it up on Oct. 23 in the wake of an NBA sports-betting scandal, telling reporters, “Obviously, after every game, we get DMs about not hitting people’s parlays. There’s been games where I’ve been called every name in the book, just because I didn’t hit a three or two. I mean, that¶¶Òőap just the state of the game we’re in, since sports betting got legal. So I mean, just kind of deal with it. Not think about it. Don’t check your DMs after games.”

Cory Fox, senior vice president of public policy and sustainability at FanDuel, said the company banishes gamblers from its app if they are caught harassing athletes. The other legalized sports books have similar policies.

“First and foremost, we find the harassment of athletes abhorrent,” Fox said.

In June 2025, FanDuel who heckled Gabby Thomas, an Olympic gold medalist in track. The fan, who goes by “Mr100kaday” and describes himself as “The Track and Field Bully,” posted a video of himself hurling insults as Thomas signed autographs and claimed that his heckling caused Thomas to lose the race and allowed him to win a $1,000 parlay bet.

FanDuel is working with sports leagues to develop a process to identify and investigate harassers so they can be banned from the app, Fox said.

“It’s also true there has been an increase in bad behavior,” he said. “This is something we’ve seen globally and it has a lot of factors involved.”

Temptation lurks

There is another dark side to sports gambling — rigged performances.

A major betting scandal rocked the NBA in October when the Terry Rozier, a former Charlotte Hornets point guard, who stands accused of participating in an illegal sports-betting scheme using inside NBA knowledge to defraud sportsbooks and for checking out of a game early to benefit bettors. He has .

And the city of Denver was shocked when Billups, who was then the head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, was linked to the Rozier scandal as an apparent unindicted co-conspirator. Billups was also for allegedly participating in a Mafia-backed illegal poker scheme to defraud unwitting players during card games. He has also pleaded not guilty.

Other sports-betting scandals involving athletes with Colorado ties:

• Denver Broncos defensive lineman Eyioma Uwazurike was suspended for the 2023 season for gambling on NFL games, including five involving the Broncos
• Colorado Rapids midfielder Max Alves was removed from the team in 2023 in the wake of a match-fixing investigation in his home country of Brazil
• Jontay Porter, the brother of former Nuggets starter Michael Porter Jr., was banned from the NBA in 2024 after he disclosed confidential information to sports bettors about his health and limited his participation in one or more games for betting purposes while playing for the Toronto Raptors

Sports betting scandals are almost as old as sports themselves. Think of the Black Sox scandal during the 1919 World Series, when multiple team members conspired with professional gamblers to throw games.

, who played in the NBA for eight years and overseas for three, said gambling is part of the culture for professional athletes.

During his 11 years of pro ball, teammates would bet on anything — trick shots during practice, card games on the road, even which referees would call a playoff game, Funderburke said. It’s the nature of being competitive and confident.

“You’re taught at an early age to bet on yourself,” he said. “You’ve overcome the odds, right? Little League, high school, college, now in the NBA, you’re playing against the best in the world. You always feel like you can overcome the odds. And with athletes, they feel like they can win at just about anything.”

Funderburke, who now works as a financial adviser, speaks out against gambling and tells his clients there are better things to do with their money. He traveled to Colorado in May to encourage lawmakers to pass a bill that would establish guardrails on sports betting in an attempt to curb addiction rates.

“Here’s the problem with the culture,” he said. “Most of the guys that I know — and I won’t say names — who had issues with gambling, not only end up having financial constraints and issues, but their marriages and their families deteriorate at the same time, which I think is much worse than any type of financial problems.”

The professional leagues and universities know the temptation is there and they are working to combat it.

But they are not always successful.

The controversy surrounding Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby serves as the latest example.

‘A source of heartburn’

Days before the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament, sent a warning to all of its athletes: Sports betting is against the rules.

“It is still to a large degree one of the worst violations you can have,” said , CSU’s associate athletic director for compliance. “With sports wagering, the door pretty much gets shut down. Like a positive drug test too many times, your eligibility is just shot.”

However, the Sorsby case upended that policy for college football.

Sorsby made thousands of impermissible bets worth at least $90,000 on college and pro sports, including some on his team when he was a freshman at the University of Indiana. The NCAA suspended Sorsby after he was caught and admitted to gambling, but he sued in an attempt to play his senior season.

A Texas judge ruled June 8 through a temporary injunction that Sorsby should be allowed to play during the upcoming season after serving a two-game suspension. The ruling could overturn NCAA rules, and it propelled college football into uncertainty as to what happens if other student-athletes bet on their own games.

The decision undermined a longstanding NCAA policy that forbids college athletes from gambling on sports and bans them if they’re caught betting on their own teams.

College sports are rapidly changing, with athletes able to earn money from their schools, booster clubs, television commercials and social media feeds. They have more money in their pockets now — in some cases, millions of dollars, Siemer said. The temptation to bet on sports lurks, he said, especially for high-level athletes who believe they know more about their sport than anyone else and can predict wins and losses on sports-betting apps.

“That’s a source of heartburn for us,” he said. “We don’t want to legislate morality, but they have more money now than when they just had a scholarship, and we want them to be smart with it.”

Every student-athlete signs a gambling agreement, acknowledging that they cannot place bets and cannot provide insider information to others, Siemer said.

Each year, CSU brings in experts to talk to students about the risks of gambling and to educate them on the NCAA’s rules that prohibit gambling. The athletics department wants them to understand how important it is that they do not leak tips about injuries or game strategies to others, who might benefit from the inside knowledge, Siemer said.

Last year, a presentation to students revealed just how much money was bet on each sport during a single season, and while Siemer said he could not remember the specifics, he recalled that it was “jaw-dropping.”

While football is the most popular sport for gamblers who bet on CSU sports, other teams also see healthy amounts of wagers, he said.

“I think the presumption is everyone is betting on football,” Siemer said. “Well, it’s not just football. It’s all of the sports. These sports-betting companies will put a line on anything. It doesn’t matter. Women’s tennis. Women’s soccer. The presumption that it’s all on football and basketball should be put to bed.”

Nip it in the bud

Aside from talking to athletes about the pitfalls of gambling, the leagues and teams are turning to professional monitors for help. The NCAA’s major conferences contract with , a company that specializes in sports compliance and integrity.

Matt Heap, a former deputy director, manages IC360’s , a program that monitors betting among athletes at more than 150 universities and more than 25 professional sports leagues.

“That monitors every game, every goal, every pitch,” he said.

Prohibet coordinates with sportsbooks to detect irregular gambling patterns, Heap said. The colleges also provide identifying information — dates of birth, driver’s licenses, phone numbers — on every student-athlete, making it easier to detect prohibited bets. Prohibet also monitors coaches, trainers, administrators and referees to identify irregular betting patterns.

The program can even find crossover bets from different internet addresses that can connect student-athletes to accounts owned by friends and family, he said. Word is spreading among college athletes that they can get caught, he said.

“It nips it in the bud,” Heap said. “The ones that continue to do it and push it are the ones they need to keep an eye on.”

IC360 also works with NCAA athletic departments to educate athletes on the rules surrounding gambling and to warn them about the pitfalls surrounding them. Even telling a friend, family member or classmate about a team member’s injury can sway bets, Heap said.

“Something that seems as innocent or innocuous as that can be the first sign someone is trying to get a hook into a player,” he said. “You guys are targets because someone who wants to manipulate a game outcome has to have a player, a ref or some other game official.”

Those who work with athletes believe education about sports betting must start at a younger age.

Last year, the paired with the to start a gambling awareness program for high school athletes.

CHSAA officials wanted players, parents and coaches to understand the rules and the consequences of violating them, commissioner Mike Krueger said. It’s becoming a national issue at the high school level.

Legal sportsbooks don’t take wagers on high school sports because it is prohibited by state laws, but offshore betting sites accept those wagers, as do emerging prediction markets. People must be 21 to open a legal sports betting account in the U.S., but young people access them through family members and older friends.

“It’s recognizing the reality,” Krueger said. “That’s where we’ve got to have the awareness. While sports betting continues to expand across our society, our responsibility remains unchanged. We look at it as a student well-being issue and not just around rules enforcement.”

READ MORE FROM THIS SPECIAL REPORT: Colorado’s gamble on sports betting

“Folks with breathing-related ailments like me — we looked forward to breathing a little bit easier,” Ard-Smith testified before the Senate’s Transportation and Energy committee. “I’m concerned that the progress we’ve made as a state and as a city will be thwarted.”

Colorado Springs Utilities, which operates the Ray D. Nixon Power Plant in Fountain, about 85 miles south of Denver, isn’t alone in prolonging the life of its coal-fired plant. Providers that operate two other such plants — one on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains in Craig, and one on the eastern side in Pueblo — did not shut them down on Dec. 31, as planned. State law and replace it with cleaner-burning alternatives such as wind and solar.

Emergency orders from the Trump administration kept the Craig unit from retiring, while equipment malfunctions and transmission grid constraints contributed to the postponed shutdowns of coal-fired units in Pueblo and Colorado Springs, respectively. Xcel Energy, the state’s largest utility, and Colorado Springs Utilities requested these delays and were supported by the state.

Residents like Ard-Smith, consumer advocates and doctors statewide agreed that allowing these three coal-fired power plants to stay open beyond their scheduled closure dates will worsen public health, contribute to more deaths and increase costs for ratepayers. The tab is alone to keep the Craig Generating Station online, according to one report.

Coal is and dirtier to combust for power generation than renewable energy. Colorado’s are among the state’s worst polluters and major sources of that obfuscates world-famous views in Rocky Mountain National Park.

These plants are also ringed by communities with lower median incomes and greater proportions of people of color who suffer higher rates of .

Per unit of energy, coal-fired power plants belch more fine particulate matter, mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and  than any other energy source. These generators also release millions of pounds annually of greenhouse gases that warm the atmosphere, causing more intense and extreme weather events such as heat waves, floods and hail.

And that¶¶Òőap not all: Several of Colorado’s remaining coal-fired plants did not install modern pollution controls in anticipation of their replacement with cleaner energy sources. Their continued use led Gov. Jared Polis to admit in May that the state won’t reach his goal of 100% renewable-powered electricity by 2040, relative to 2005 emissions levels. Utilities will, however, hit — required by law — in 2030, he added.

Keeping the three coal-fired plants open will also exacerbate the state’s air quality, which already , as well as increase hospital visits, missed school time for children with asthma and pregnancy complications, physicians and public health researchers told Capital & Main.

“If we think about our three core functions, we have lungs that keep us breathing, a heart that keeps our blood circulating, and a brain that is the circuit board that runs the body,” said Dr. Sara Carpenter, a pediatrician and executive director of Healthy Air and Water Colorado, a nonpartisan nonprofit comprised of healthcare providers.

“Air pollution, and coal in particular, are lethal to all three of those systems,” she added.

Discontinuing coal use leads to measurable health improvements. Scientists at Colorado State University found in  published in GeoHealth that closing coal-fired power plants would reduce deaths in disproportionately impacted communities.

Conversely, keeping them open will increase mortality, said Sheryl Magzamen, a professor in the environmental and radiological health sciences department at Colorado State University and the study’s lead author.

“Ultimately, the longer these plants operate, people will get sick, and people will die,” the epidemiologist said.

More coal plants kept open across nation

The prolonged lifespans of three coal-fired units in Colorado put them among left open in spite of planned retirements since the president took office for a second time in January 2025. He doubled down on his support of what he calls “clean, beautiful coal” this month when he announced $700 million in federal funding, in part to build the first new such plants in the U.S. in more than a decade in Alaska and West Virginia.

Tapping power from such generators is necessary to help meet escalating electricity demand stemming in large part from data centers that fuel artificial intelligence, his administration said.

Colorado’s attorney general and other state litigators filed suit against the federal government¶¶Òőap emergency energy orders, claiming that leaving such plants online threatens to unwind hard-fought progress toward a clean-energy economy. About a third of the average global temperature increase since preindustrial times is attributable to coal combustion, according to the International Energy Agency.

The federal orders also prompted Polis to sign into law on June 4  that institutes a cap on greenhouse gas emissions allowed from coal-fired power plants operating past their planned retirement dates.

Backsliding isn’t happening only in the United States, where the White House is actively discouraging investment in wind and solar energy. Worldwide, more than 70% of coal units slated for shutdown last year were kept online, according to from Global Energy Monitor, a nonprofit that tracks global energy use. The U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that retirements scheduled for this year .

A resurgence in coal use was partially to blame for a 2.4% increase in planet-warming emissions in the U.S. last year, after two years of decline, researchers from the Rhodium Group, an independent data provider, revealed in .

In Colorado, power plants continued to use coal as officials warned residents to prepare for the annual “ozone season” — the days between May 31 and Aug. 31 when the state’s unusual topography and unpredictable weather conspire to worsen ground-level pollution.

“Fossil fuel combustion generates a lot of precursors for ozone and they have a pretty substantial rate of spread,” said Jonathan Buonocore, an assistant professor of environmental health at Boston University.

“Air pollution from these things can be cross-continental,” added Buonocore, who worked with other researchers to build a dataset for  published in November in Environmental Research Letters that found that Colorado’s population is among the nation’s most exposed to fossil fuel infrastructure.

Health impacts from smog and ozone

Smog forms when heat and sunlight react with toxic gases released by vehicles, oil and gas rigs, and fossil-fuel-fired power plants, among other sources. Ozone pollution in metropolitan Denver routinely exceeds federal standards throughout the summer, prompting public health officials to issue that direct older residents, children and those with respiratory and other ailments to stay inside.

Colorado’s ozone problems also contribute to failing grades from the American Lung Association for areas near, and within the same region, as coal-fired power units.

Rio Blanco County, located south of the Craig Generating Station, received a “D” grade from the nonprofit for its air quality. Moffat County, where the power station is located, is without monitors that allow the organization to monitor its atmosphere for pollutants.

In , and again in , the U.S. Department of Energy issued a 90-day emergency order that required Unit 1 at the Craig Generating Station, slated to close Dec. 31, to remain operational. Since December, Unit 1 has been fired up for only 16 days to help the regional power authority cope with outages and grid uncertainty, said Mark Stutz, a spokesman for Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association.

The facility includes two other coal-fired units. Unit 2 is slated for closure Sept. 30, 2028, and Unit 3 on Jan. 1 of that year, he added.

Tri-State operates Units 1 and 2 with several other providers as part of a co-op that must pass along to ratepayers repair expenses for Unit 1, which needed repairs when the federal government ordered it to remain operational, Tri-State CEO Duane Highley said in a Jan. 29  on the order.

About 300 miles southeast in Pueblo, a coal-fired unit at Xcel Energy’s Comanche Generating Station continues to operate until the end of 2026. The state’s Public Utility Commission approved a request from the utility and state officials of Unit 2 to allow for the repair of Unit 3, which was “extensively damaged” and out of service.

Postponing closures, even for a year, matters for children’s health because their developing lungs are sensitive to air pollution from coal-fired power plants, said Carpenter, the pediatrician.

“Puberty has such big growth spurts, and the lungs really increase in size,” she said. “A study in Southern California found that between 1994 and 2011, as air pollution decreased, lung function development in adolescents increased — it was a statistically significant change.”

Thirty miles north in Fountain, Colorado Springs Utilities will be allowed to keep the Ray D. Nixon coal plant  after Polis signed a bill in May. The three-year extension of the unit¶¶Òőap life was necessary to allow the utility to meet its clean energy goals as required by state law, Travas Deal, the utility’s chief executive, testified in April at the state Senate’s Transportation and Energy Committee.

The utility needs greater transmission capacity to add renewables like wind and solar, he added, and its customers cannot afford another rate increase beyond the 6.5% a year jump that¶¶Òőap already in place. The region’s service area led the state in the number of low-income energy assistance program applications in 2025.

“Over the past several years, energy bills have risen faster than wages,” Nicole Means, the utility’s energy assistance program director, told lawmakers. “When energy costs rise, they don’t just strain household budgets, they ripple outward — higher utility bills mean less money for groceries, childcare and healthcare.”

This article was by Capital & Main and is republished here with permission. is an independent, nonprofit investigative news publication that reports on inequality, climate change and other issues.

The rusted structure was barely hanging on, and its operation was time-consuming for the busy ranchers, who had to lug special tools on all-terrain vehicles and on foot to open or close the mechanism. But it seemed impossible for the tiny district to find the $6.8 million needed to replace the headgate and the rocky diversion dam that pushed water into the canal.

Then legalized sports betting came along, and, with it, millions of dollars for Colorado water projects. The tiny irrigation district, in Moffat County in the far northwest corner of the state, soon became the poster child for how gambling money is benefiting Colorado’s waterways.

The district received a $750,000 grant from the , which doles out money from sports betting tax revenue, said, sustainable food and water program director for , which helped the district land the grant. That led to a matching grant from the program. With those two grants in hand, other organizations jumped on board, and money poured in, she said.

In 2024, the Maybell Irrigation District installed a new headgate that can be opened or closed via cellphone. If a rancher is cutting hay and doesn’t need to irrigate, he can close the gates to match the amount of water he actually needs at that moment, Lane said. And the diversion structure no longer uses boulders to control the water flow. Instead, it’s a modern structure that is the right height for water control.

The project also benefited four fish species, including the threatened humpback chub, and it made river navigation easier for boaters, helping the region’s outdoor recreation economy.

“That $750,000 was really the ball that got it all rolling, that showed people, ‘Oh, this is going somewhere,'” Lane said of that initial state grant.

Since sports betting became legal in May 2020, the state has collected more than $154 million in taxes, and the Colorado Water Conservation Board has funneled $140 million to various projects that preserve and conserve Colorado’s precious water. Supporters say the gambling money is a godsend for ranchers, fishermen, paddlers and others who want to protect the state’s water and those who depend on it for their livelihoods. Critics, however, say legalized sports betting has come at a cost — fueling an addiction crisis that the state was unprepared for and is underfunding.

This is the second story in The Denver Post’s three-part series exploring the impact of legalized sports betting in Colorado, including the billions spent on wagers, rising addiction rates, and the impact on athletes and the games they play.

Erin Karney Spaur, executive vice president of the , said she reminds her family members and friends who bet on sports that every time they place a wager, they are helping ranchers like those in Maybell access precious water.

“It¶¶Òőap exponentially more than we could ever imagine,” she said of sports betting’s impact on ranches and water. “Coloradans like to gamble on sports, and water is the beneficiary.”

‘That’s our ticket’

In 2015, the Colorado Water Conservation Board — at the behest of then-Gov. John Hickenlooper — released a report on how to best conserve and protect the state’s water.

“It made a lot of plans. It set a bit of policy, and it identified two big funding needs,” said , director of western water for the .

The board determined at the time that Colorado needed $100 million per year for projects to improve river and stream health and restoration, to replace the agricultural industry’s aging irrigation systems and to conserve as much water as possible.

“The 2015 water plan put up that price tag and then continued on its merry way,” he said.

But the money wasn’t there.

A consortium of groups with interests in the state’s waterways — including environmental, agricultural and recreational organizations — began meeting to figure out how to fund the water plan. They considered various tax schemes, such as asking the state to put a levy on bottled water or rental cars. But none of their ideas came with an easy path to voter approval — something necessary to raise statewide taxes in Colorado.

“We sat around a table for over a year and a half trying to figure out how to do this, and there were no good options,” Jackson said.

Then, in 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a ruling that offered the answer to funding water projects in Colorado: . That decision overturned the , paving the way for states to legalize sports betting.

“I said, ‘That’s it. That’s our ticket,’ ” Jackson said.

Jackson thought Colorado voters would be sympathetic to the state’s water crisis, caused by decades of drought and climate change. They also wagered that a tax on sports betting would be easier for voters to digest because it would only be paid by those who chose to gamble; if someone didn’t want to pay the tax, then they didn’t have to participate, he said.

The legislature agreed to put it on the 2019 ballot, and voters approved with 51% in favor. The bill established a 10% tax on sports betting companies’ revenue.

“Water certainly pushed it over,” Jackson said.

Sports betting was slated to open in Colorado on May 1, 2020. But the big date was a false start. The COVID-19 pandemic hobbled betting like a quarterback with a bum knee.

“Sports betting was legal, and there were no sports,” Jackson said. “And I thought to myself, ‘What the hell did we just do?’ ”

Gross sports betting revenue in Colorado was $2.6 million, with 25% of wagers placed on table tennis. Tax revenue was just $96,544.

But that freeze on sports did not last, and the gambling money began flowing as rapidly as Clear Creek during the early summer snowmelt.

The revenue stream

Colorado leaders soon realized sports betting was far more lucrative for tax revenues than had been predicted. In the first six years of legalized sports betting, the has reported record-setting figures each year.

“It¶¶Òőap been hugely successful,” said Drew Peternell, Colorado state director at . “Revenues from sports betting have greatly exceeded any expectations when these mechanisms were put in place.”

By May 2021, when sports betting in Colorado hit its first anniversary, monthly tax revenue hit $635,640 — more than five times what sports wagering had brought in during the same month just a year prior, according to data from the Department of Revenue.

In its most recent report on sports-betting taxes, the department reported it collected $4.4 million in April. The news releases often tout the success of sports betting and the benefits it brings to state waterways. They also include links to , the state’s website for problem gambling resources.

The April tax revenue was 28% more than the amount collected in April 2025, and taxes collected for the current fiscal year through April were at $40.7 million, up 35% over the same period last year.

Thus far, the largest single-month record for tax revenue came in January when the state collected $5 million from $57.8 million in revenue. Coloradans bet $630.2 million, with $119 million wagered on professional football in a month when the Broncos made a run to the conference championship game.

Proposition DD’s 10% tax on net proceeds from sports betting means casinos and companies doing business in Colorado pay the tax after they pay out winning bets and federal taxes.

But the Colorado General Assembly placed a $29 million-a-year cap on sports betting tax revenue when it approved Proposition DD for the statewide ballot. If the state collected more than $29 million each year, the overage was to be refunded to the casinos and licensed gaming companies.

Proposition DD also determined how sports betting proceeds were to be divvied up between programs, with water projects receiving 93% of the tax revenue.

The first projection estimated that sports betting would generate about $16 million annually and that water projects would receive $14.9 million.

Six percent of the tax revenue, or an estimated $960,000, would be set aside in a special fund that would be distributed to Colorado’s three casino cities and other entities that received gaming revenue if they could prove that the new sports betting market caused them to lose money due to decreased bets on traditional gambling and horse racing.

So far, no one has tapped that fund.

Problem gambling would receive just $130,000 annually for establishing a crisis hotline and training for gambling addiction counselors. That amount was increased to $2.5 million annually in 2023.

The Post interviewed seven people whose agencies receive sports betting tax revenue, but only one — Jackson — said they bet on sports themselves. And only one person, who did not want their family’s story to be told publicly, said they sometimes were bothered by the addiction problem because a loved one had died by suicide after gambling away his money.

The tax revenue proved so lucrative that water proponents returned to the legislature to ask for another statewide ballot. This time, which voters approved in 2024, eliminated the $29 million cap, meaning casinos and licensed sports betting companies can no longer receive refunds. And more money will pour into the water conservation fund.

In 2025, water proponents returned to the revenue well again.

This time, they asked the General Assembly to eliminate a clause that had allowed sports betting companies to use their free bet promotions as tax write-offs.

In those promotions, DraftKings, FanDuel and others lure prospective gamblers by offering “free bonus bets” when users apply a promo code advertised on television.

During the NFL’s wild card playoff weekend between Jan. 10 and 12, for example, FanDuel offered a promotion in which bettors would receive $300 when they placed a $5 bet on a game. In the past, FanDuel would have been allowed to write that $300 off as a tax deduction.

But starting in January, that tax deduction was no longer allowed, which means FanDuel and other companies doing business in Colorado pay even more in taxes.

For years, the sports betting companies had argued that losing the tax deduction would force them to pull back on those offers and lead to fewer players, Jackson said. But Colorado watched other states that did not offer similar tax deductions and realized those promotions were still available to gamblers.

“It’s still the primary marketing scheme,” Jackson said. “Colorado was very much an outlier in allowing the deduction.”

Colorado’s water woes

As the planet’s temperature rises, Colorado’s rivers and streams become more threatened by drought.

Last year was for Colorado after the state marked its 10th-warmest year out of 130 years of data, according to the at .  It was the 51st driest year on record, and a swath of northwestern Colorado fell into exceptional drought — the most dire category recorded by the .

And 2026 has brought even hotter and drier weather, with the winter being the warmest on record and snowpack at its lowest levels since records started being kept in 1941.

While drought dries up lakes, rivers and streams, it also impacts almost every person living in Colorado. People live with a shortage of drinking water supplies, irrigation becomes trickier for ranchers, rivers dry up for rafters and fishermen, fish and wildlife struggle, and manufacturers must cope with less water.

Less water also boosts the state’s risk for devastating wildfires and can cause insect infestations or forest diseases to spread.

“Climate change is water change in Colorado, and we need every resource we can to put towards building a more resilient future,” said Lauren Ris, the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s director.

The conservation board intends to help Coloradans address all of those issues with the  through the state’s water plan.

“It primarily focuses on water supply, not water quality,” Ris said.

Projects awarded money during the most recent grant cycle in September included:

• to build a new water storage facility at the Jurgens Reservoir in Weld County that will increase the Lower Latham Reservoir Company’s irrigation supply
• to Adams 12 Five Star Schools to evaluate 54 irrigation systems across 475 acres of irrigated landscape and develop a water conservation plan for the district
• for a Colorado River conservation exhibit at the Confluence Center of Colorado in Mesa County

The water board employs a team of regional grant managers who live and work in the areas they serve. They become familiar with their region’s needs and help decide which projects are worth funding, said Jeannine Shaw, the grants section chief at the water board.

The more organizations applying for a grant together, the more competitive the application becomes, she said. And all of the grants awarded require the applicants to find matching funds, doubling the amount of money available.

And, as more money is spent on sports betting, Colorado can expand its outreach to all four corners of this parched state.

“The difference that makes on the ground is pretty incredible,” Ris said.

In the San Luis Valley, ranchers have long spread water over their grasslands when temperatures start to freeze to create a sheet of ice over the vegetation. As the ice slowly melts during the spring thaw, it seeps into the ground, recharging the water table. It also helps revegetate retired farmland and creates a habitat for wintering birds and wildlife, said Fay Hartman, conservation director for the southwest region of .

In September 2025, American Rivers received a $199,761 grant funded by sports betting to study how the winter ice sheet practice actually benefits the environment. The grant will provide the money for a groundwater study so scientists can collect data by placing groundwater wells at the near Saguache. American Rivers secured $145,956 in matching funds.

There just wasn’t good data on the benefits of creating the winter sheet ice, Shaw said. Different groups wanted to quantify what happens so they would be better informed about the practice and find ways to improve it.

The project, named Frozen Assets, demonstrates the water conservation board’s desire to support innovative ideas for Colorado’s water management, Ris said.

“We’re really able to test some of these theories and use this funding where there is not a whole lot of other opportunity out there to really test some concepts and pilot some things that could have pretty big benefits,” Ris said.

So far, Ris and others who are working to solve Colorado’s water woes believe sports betting revenue is the lifebuoy the state needs to start solving the crisis. It’s not enough, they said, but it’s charting the right course as the state responds to increasing drought, floods and wildfires worsened by climate change.

“We’re thrilled,” she said. “What we really needed was a steady funding stream for water projects, and that¶¶Òőap what this proved to be.”

READ PART 3 NEXT: Sports betting is changing the game for Colorado’s fans and athletes as big money adds new pressures

So far, however, Colorado hasn’t seen an unusual number of cases of West Nile virus, the main disease carried by mosquitoes in this part of the country. Mosquito surveillance is just starting, which makes it difficult to know whether the bugs have been able to take advantage of favorable conditions.

Colorado had a relatively mild winter, which likely allowed more mosquitoes to survive, said Jim Fredericks, senior vice president for public affairs at the National Pest Management Association.

When temperatures reach the high 80s, mosquitoes also mature faster, allowing the population to compound as more reach the age to lay eggs, he said.

“You can squeeze in more generations during a so-called mosquito season,” he said.

Mosquitoes need standing water to lay their eggs, so the state’s drought conditions would seem to work against them, Fredericks said. At the same time, they’re quite resourceful and will rely more on water pooling in manmade items if they don’t have a suitable pond available, he said.

“We end up having water sources around structures” when people water their gardens or cool off with a hose, he said.

While all mosquitoes may be annoying, the ones Coloradans need to worry about are from the Culex group of species, which transmit West Nile virus, said Greg Ebel, a professor of microbiology, immunology and pathology at Colorado State University’s Center for Vector-Borne Infectious Disease.

The previous two West Nile seasons were relatively severe, but right now, the limited data isn’t pointing to a repeat of that, Ebel said.

Jefferson County reported one case in early June, involving a person who was hospitalized, but survived. Last year, the state health department reported 286 cases, with half involving neurological complications. (The actual rate of complications is likely much lower, because most people don’t get tested for West Nile.)

Mosquito surveillance around Fort Collins started a week ago, and that first round didn’t pick up enough West Nile-infected Culex specimens to raise concerns, Ebel said. One week of data isn’t enough to draw conclusions, though, and local conditions can lead to different mosquito populations, he said.

“The warm winter might be concerning, but we don’t really know that yet,” he said. “It’s been a pretty dry spring.”

The Denver Department of Public Health and Environment said it will start trapping and testing mosquitoes for West Nile next week, as well as monitoring 70 water sites and applying chemicals if needed.

Public mosquito control, such as spraying water with substances that kill larvae, is highly effective in reducing populations and the odds of disease, Ebel said.

Individuals also can protect themselves by draining any standing water around their homes, avoiding outdoor activity between dusk and dawn, keeping window screens repaired and using an with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, such as DEET.

general manager Sal Pace also said in an interview Tuesday that his agency is planning sports-fan-friendly train stops and scheduling near the new Denver Summit soccer stadium off South Broadway, the University of Colorado stadium in Boulder, the Colorado State University stadium in Fort Collins, and the  Air Force Academy stadium north of Colorado Springs.

All depends on voters approving a tax hike of around 4 cents on a $10 purchase to help finance passenger rail service. District officials planned to decide by August whether to place a measure on the November election ballots. The Broncos, Summit, and other “special event” stops also require agreements with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Union Pacific railway companies, owners of the tracks.

Broncos officials first proposed a stop at their new stadium and have been negotiating with state rail officials. A $332 million three-trip-a-day passenger rail “starter service” linking Denver Union Station with Boulder and Fort Collins is scheduled to start in 2029. If voters approve, the second-phase rail service running south from Denver — past the Broncos and Summit stadiums — to Colorado Springs and Pueblo would start in 2032, Pace said. The district would pay $5 million to install the Broncos stadium stop platform, while costs for a station hall and sidewalks not directly related to transportation would fall to the Broncos, he said.

“We as a state have said we want our sports teams to be integrated into the urban environments. Thank God for that,” Pace said, comparing Colorado sports stadiums with those built elsewhere in outlying suburban areas with space for gigantic parking lots.

“You don’t have to worry about congestion, driving, or parking. You could have a couple of beers and be safe – and get back home with fellow Broncos fans. This is going to get people off roads, make our roads safer, and be a transportation benefit.”

Separate talks with Denver Summit and city transportation and infrastructure officials are in progress toward putting a stop near the new soccer stadium, Pace said. District officials are also working on agreements to adjust train schedules to serve crowds at the stops near stadiums in Boulder and Fort Collins. “We are excited about both. And we have had talks with the U.S. Air Force Academy about a stop” serving crowds for football and other special events in that area north of Colorado Springs.

At the proposed new Broncos stadium, and Front Range rail officials had considered a track spur so that trains could park during games and be ready to handle passenger surges. That would have cost tens of millions of dollars, Pace said. Front Range train schedules instead will be adjusted to serve crowds at major events, he said.

Broncos officials on Tuesday confirmed their interest in a train stop at their stadium, which they plan to open in 2031, with a retractable roof and, eventually, surrounding housing and commercial development spanning 150 acres. Regional Transportation District light rail trains already run along the east side of the 58-acre Burnham Yard property.