Colorado health officials will spend $1 million on a study to detail the environmental influences on neighborhoods along East Colfax Avenue in Aurora, launching the first of two equity and cumulative impact analyses meant to direct future policy.
The state selected the neighborhood from Yosemite Street to Peoria Street out of dozens asking to be part of the research, and will partner with the local nonprofit group Black Parents United Foundation to shape the study toward what the community wants to know about itself, said Meghan Guevara, director of the state Office of Environmental Justice.
From information on particulate pollution from vehicles, to mental health issues from overcrowded or deteriorated housing, to the impact of rising urban temperatures, researchers will take a deep dive into what community members want their policymakers to consider.
“All of those come together to produce a lot of stress on the community, and often we look at those factors one at a time,” Guevara said in an interview Tuesday. “This gives us a chance to say, when we put everything together, what does this mean for what it’s like to live here, and how should we take that into consideration when we’re making decisions about this community in the future?”
About 35,000 people live in the study boundaries.
Similar studies in what is an “emerging body of research” on community environmental health are underway in New Jersey, California and other states, Guevara said.
The intensive neighborhood studies come out of recommendations from the Environmental Justice Action Task Force, which met in 2021 and 2022, on how the state could start implementing House Bill 1266, also known as the Environmental Justice Act, passed by the legislature in 2021. A 2024 statute required the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to conduct two cumulative impact analyses.
The second study location has not been chosen, but the first round prompted applications from a wide variety of rural and urban neighborhoods across the state, Guevara said.
Colorado will spend $900,000 on a research contractor to conduct the study, and $125,000 with the community partner Black Parents United. The money comes from a combination of general fund dollars and a pool of fines paid by air quality rules violators.
Though the neighborhood wants the research, the state is sensitive to avoiding the study feeling intrusive or a government imposition from above, Guevara said. Using a trusted community partner gives the state “guidance about the best way to approach this work in a way that’s comfortable for their community members, as well as serving as a bridge between the researchers and the department and community members,” she said.
The study will not result, however, in a bullet list of upcoming bills or policy overhauls.
“The statute does specifically say that the report is not allowed to include those policy recommendations, but it is intended to provide a lot of resources to folks who are making policy decisions,” Guevara said.
The boundaries of the East Colfax study area stretch from Yosemite Street on the west to Peoria on the east, and 26th Avenue on the north to 6th Avenue on the south.