Are we on board for $$ train growth?

We’re here today to celebrate the possibility of once-obscure things becoming wildly popular. People toiling in anonymity until their talent and success sweeps the world. Fans rewarding hard work and team work with attention and riches.

No, not NCAA women’s March Madness, silly. We’re talking about this newsletter! The chance that humble reporters digging away at the challenging topics of health care and climate will someday leap to the top of the ratings with the help of our dedicated readers.

Need more inspiration? We’re taking ours from news that 12.3 million people watched a quarterfinal women’s college game featuring teams hailing from the teeming international metropolises of Baton Rouge and Iowa City. That’s right – Caitlin Clark and Iowa outlasting Angel Reese and Louisiana State outdrew the recent World Series and NBA Finals.

Is there a similar surge coming for competitive journalists throwing up 3-pointers from the logo on topics like ozone parts per billion or prescription drug policy boards? We stay late at the gym tossing jump shot prayers with the hope you’ll bring friends and family to see the aspiring greatness at ColoradoSun.com.

On to a packed news day!

HELP US REPORT: Voters are at the heart of every election. We want to know what issues most matter to you. Your hopes and concerns will set the agenda for how we report and write about the issues — and the stakes — of the 2024 election.

Please take a few moments to tell us what you think candidates should be talking about as they compete for your vote. We will use your contact information only to reach out if a reporter wants to better understand your comments. If you choose to remain anonymous, your name will not appear in any story.

TAKE THE SURVEY

A graphic showing how much the ingredients in a burger have increased — A light rail train waits for passengers at RTD’s Peoria Street station in Aurora in August 2021. (Kevin J. Beaty, Denverite)

$600 million

Annual amount for passenger trains raised by a potential 0.5-cent sales tax

Colorado has some big decisions to make in the next few months over how tightly we want to hitch ourselves to a future of more passenger trains to solve transportation issues.

They are billion-dollar choices. The Front Range Passenger Rail District’s board says it will decide within just a few weeks whether to ask voters in 13 Front Range counties this fall for a new sales tax raising up to $600 million a year for expanded passenger rail service. The legislature is debating tens of millions of dollars in new fees on rental car transactions as a honey pot to draw in more federal funding for those rail expansions.

And state officials are considering more legislation to sort out who will be in charge of all this — some don’t want to just hand more money to RTD to oversee and operate the expansion, though that would be a logical choice. Should it be a new joint authority? Who gets to cash the federal checks? Does the governor get to appoint all the boards?

So it’s the perfect time to get two of the most important people involved in one place for a Colorado Sun panel. You’ve already been sending in dozens of great questions for Andy Karsian, director of the current configuration of Front Range Passenger Rail, and RTD chief Debra Johnson. Keep them coming, and we’ll try to ask as many as possible during our free online event that first airs at 6 p.m. Thursday.

Here are some more questions for our train-focused duo:

We have an hour to talk about both big-picture transportation concepts and practical taxpayer questions on funding, so join us Thursday. And thanks for all the great questions so far.

26%

Portion of Colorado River water used just to grow alfalfa for cattle

Next time you take a bite out of a juicy hamburger or chunk of cheese made in the Western U.S., say thank you to the Colorado River.

Last week, researchers released the most complete accounting ever done of how the river’s water is used. It may not be a surprise that irrigated agriculture uses the most water, taking up 52% of the water consumed across the 246,000-square-mile basin. But a shocking one-half of that is from just one crop that humans don’t eat (directly) — alfalfa.

Alfalfa hay, which is used to feed beef and dairy cattle, uses more than 5 million acre-feet of Colorado River water. That’s 26% of all the water consumed in the basin. One acre-foot roughly equals the annual water use of two or three households.

That means alfalfa uses more water than cities, commercial users and industries: Collectively, these users consume about 3.5 million acre-feet, or 18%, of the river’s water. The Colorado River provides water to 40 million people across seven Western states, 30 tribal nations and two states in Mexico.

It also uses more than the water sucked up by river-front ecosystems and wetlands, which use 19% of the river’s water.

This accounting of how nature uses the Colorado River is one of the most novel aspects of the new study, said Brian Richter, the lead researcher and president of Sustainable Waters, a global organization focused on water scarcity challenges.

“We thought that it was about time for somebody to do an accounting for where all of the water goes,” Richter said. “Specifically, we really wanted to bring nature into that conversation.”

Other studies have offered limited accounting for how the Colorado River is used. But this is the first to take all of the river’s uses into consideration.

It adds in water lost, or “consumed,” when it evaporates off reservoirs or through riparian and wetland evapotranspiration. It includes water consumed through out-of-basin exports to places like Denver. It incorporates Mexico and the Gila River, a tributary in New Mexico and Arizona that provides much of the water for the Phoenix Metropolitan Area.

And the research comes just in time: Seven state negotiators, 30 tribal nations and federal officials are all weighing how the river’s water will be managed for decades to come.

“Because of these intense negotiations going on over the future management of the Colorado River, we were quite anxious to get the most accurate numbers in front of those negotiators,” Richter said.

What does this study tell us about Colorado? Stay tuned this week for a research breakdown at ColoradoSun.com.

$1.3 billion

The amount of medical debt Coloradans had on credit reports in 2020

The latest installments of our ongoing series on medical debt in Colorado dropped this morning, and they reveal the massive scope of the problem in the state.

More than a billion dollars’ worth of medical debt sat on Coloradans’ credit reports as of late 2020. But that’s also just a slice of the overall debt. Medical debt can also exist as credit card charges that someone took on to pay off medical bills; or as loans from family, friends or financiers; or as payment plans with health care providers; or as the bill someone is letting sit longer than they’d like so they can make it to their next paycheck.

Extrapolating from the results of one national survey, it’s possible that more than 1 million people in Colorado currently have some form of medical debt. Communities of color are especially hit hard.

“Medical debt impacts Coloradans profoundly,” the Colorado Attorney General’s Office wrote in a report last year.

There are two new stories available today to help you better understand the problem.

In the first KFF Health News’ Rae Ellen Bichell and Colorado Newsline’s Lindsey Toomer dive deep on the disproportionate impact medical debt has on communities of color in Colorado — especially immigrants. Colorado has one of the widest disparities in the country between the rates of medical debt in white communities and the rates in communities of color. That gap worsens long-standing disparities.

You can read that story here.

The second story, by myself, aims to provide you an overview of medical debt in Colorado through seven charts that explain how Colorado ranks nationally and which parts of the state are hardest hit. It’s a good one to skim if you’re trying to get up-to-speed on the issue.

You can read that story here.

As a reminder, this series is the result of a massive — and innovative — collaboration among multiple newsrooms, pulled together by the Colorado News Collaborative and guided by the work KFF Health News has done on medical debt at the national level. You might say that, in this instance, teamwork shows how the dream doesn’t work.

You can read all of the stories in the series, which we’re calling Diagnosis: Debt Colorado either on The Colorado Sun’s website or on COLab’s site.

(Chart by John Ingold, The Colorado Sun)

One of the perks of this job is the ability to ask for just about any data imaginable from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s vital statistics guru Kirk Bol.

Seriously, just try to stump the guy — I certainly did last week when, after seeing a billboard advertising a hospital’s labor and delivery unit, I asked if he could provide a spreadsheet of which hospitals had the most births in 2023. Four hours and 19 minutes later, said spreadsheet landed in my inbox.

Here’s what it showed: The vast majority of births in Colorado occur in hospitals along the Interstate 25 corridor. Only one hospital out of the top 25 for births — St. Mary’s Regional Hospital in Grand Junction — is outside of the Front Range.

The total number of births recorded last year, 62,142, was the second-lowest since at least 2010. (2020 was the lowest in that span, with 62,069 births.)

Birth centers and midwiferies rank well down the list, with the busiest one recording just under 300 births. But a surprising number of babies are born in homes — 1,189 in 2023.

The top hospital in the state for births last year was Rose Medical Center in Denver, with 4,228. That means a labor and delivery nurse clocking in for a 12-hour shift can expect to see five or six babies born on their watch before they go home for the day.

Rose has always done a lot of deliveries, but it’s a relative newcomer to the top spot. Through 2019, Saint Joseph Hospital, also in Denver, was No. 1. In 2010, Saint Joe’s did almost 1,000 more deliveries than Rose.

The race got tighter through the 2010s. Then, in 2020, the hospitals’ numbers flipped, with Rose gaining about 400 births a year and Saint Joe’s losing 400 births a year, vaulting Rose to No. 1.

Hit me up at johningold@coloradosun.com if you know the answer to which insurance contract switched that year to swing the race to Rose. There’s no prize for being right, unfortunately, other than my gratitude for providing insight into Colorado’s cutthroat hospital competition.

Before we leave, special shoutout to the thousands of dedicated hospital folks who safely deliver 60,000-plus babies in Colorado every year. Talk about a group of talented people toiling in obscurity who deserve fame and fortune! Thanks for delivering our future!

See you at 6 p.m. Thursday for train talk … can’t beat the fare price, which is free.

— Michael & John

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.