An EMT who arrived at the scene called for help, according to a 45-minute 911 call reviewed by Colorado Public Radio, and told the operator they could not access the workers, who were unconscious 12 feet deep in the pit, because of the potential of gas exposure.
“It was terribly tragic and also completely preventable. It’s well known that manure pits are dangerous confined spaces.”
Twenty-five minutes into the call, however, an EMT told the operator that a rescue helicopter was no longer needed; instead, a coroner should be called.
Almost one year after the incident, family members of four of the deceased are suing, claiming that Prospect Valley Dairy and HD Builders LLC knew the manure-management system was faulty and that the deaths were avoidable; they are seeking damages under Colorado’s wrongful death law. Civil Eats could not reach Arend Bos, the owner of the dairy, for comment.
“It was terribly tragic and also completely preventable,” said Jordan Barab, former deputy assistant secretary at the Occupational and Safety Health Administration (OSHA) and author of the workplace safety blog Confined Space. “It’s well known that manure pits are dangerous confined spaces.”
As Civil Eats has previously reported in its investigation Injured and Invisible, in 2022, the animal agriculture industry has long been a perilous place to work. Manure pit drownings and asphyxiation are common workplace fatalities, and animal attacks, entanglement in equipment, and suffocation in hay piles or grain bins also occur.
That reporting explained that OSHA was created in 1970 to help protect workers on the job. The agency sets safety standards, provides training to employers and employees on workplace safety, conducts inspections to ensure its standards are being met, and investigates worker complaints or after incidents that result in severe injury or death.
Under President Donald Trump’s second administration, some former government employees worry an already underregulated industry could become even more dangerous for workers, many of whom are foreign-born and some of whom are undocumented.
The number of OSHA inspectors is at an all-time low; National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) research on worker health and safety has been gutted; and farms with fewer than 10 employees are still exempt from OSHA inspections, enforcement, and penalties under an OSHA budget rider.
Prospect Valley Dairy east of Keenesburg, Colorado, the site of six worker deaths in August 2025. (Photo credit: Patrick Traylor / MediaNews Group / The Denver Post via Getty Images)
Incidents like the one at Prospect Valley Dairy demonstrate the already hazardous conditions for workers at animal agriculture facilities—which could increase as safety training resources and inspection capacity continues to diminish. With fewer inspectors, OSHA “becomes much more reactive than proactive,” Barab said.
Meanwhile, the number of animals at dairies and other animal operations is increasing, meaning workers may be vastly outnumbered by the animals they are tasked with managing and face a higher risk of dangerous interactions. Data collected and analyzed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) indicates that, from 2002 to 2022, the number of farms with 1,000 or more cows increased by 60 percent, while the number of mid-sized operations (100 to 199 cows) shrunk by 62 percent.
While the “myth of the small family farm” persists, Barab says, most workers are employed on massive operations where a small group of people manage millions of pounds of manure. In the case of Prospect Valley Dairy, workers were handling the excrement of more than 6,000 cows, which amounted to 62,500 to 112,500 gallons daily, enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in six to 10 days.
The Continued Decline of OSHA
Since its creation, OSHA has chronically been underfunded and understaffed, and the agriculture lobby has consistently promoted efforts to weaken it. President Trump prioritized shrinking the agency even further during the de-regulatory start to his second administration, led in large part by his newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
A January report from the Office of Inspector General found that the number of federal OSHA inspectors dropped 13 percent from February 2024 to June 2025. Combined with state inspectors, there are now approximately 1,720 total OSHA inspectors responsible for covering 144 million workers across many industries—meaning each inspector is responsible for the health and safety of 84,000 workers on 11.6 million worksites.
“They have to educate workers about chemical hazards and the measures needed to protect them when working in and around manure. They didn’t do that.”
Weakening OSHA has put more workers at risk, as the chances of a random inspection—or any inspection at all—have dramatically declined. It would take 191 years for the agency to inspect every workplace under its jurisdiction just once. That number has risen since 2022, when Civil Eats reported it would take 165 years.
As a result, most employers can be certain they will never see an OSHA inspector. On farms, that’s even more the case, said Debbie Berkowitz, a fellow at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, and a former senior official at OSHA.
“Most of the time [OSHA inspectors are] looking at construction sites, because those are easier to inspect, less time consuming, and they’re also all around,” she said. “So, OSHA doesn’t have to travel hours to a farm.”
Two of the workers who died at Prospect Valley Dairy were employed by Prospect Ranch LLC (which operates as Prospect Valley Dairy), and four were employed by High Plains Robotics, a division of Fiske, Inc., which provides maintenance and repairs for the technology on dairy farms. After the incident, OSHA cited both Prospect Ranch LLC and Fiske for failing to protect workers from atmospheric hazards and not teaching them how to be safe around the toxins. HD Builders LLC, whose employees were also present but remained unharmed, received citations as well.
“They have to educate workers about chemical hazards and the measures needed to protect them when working in and around manure. They didn’t do that,” Berkowitz said, and they did not even get the most severe type of citation. “One after the other went in and got killed by toxic gasses.”
But education programs take time—time that workers could spend working—and, stretched thin, a fine for missing education might only be levied when something catastrophic happens. Even so, it is the responsibility of the employer to provide that education, Berkowitz said.
“The four men we lost would not have put themselves or others in harm’s way if the extent of the danger had been even a possibility in their mind,” said Brittany McCahan, a spokesperson for Fiske. “We remain focused on doing what is in our power to ensure that a tragedy like this never happens again.”
Prospect Ranch LLC could not be reached for comment.
For many companies, non-compliance might be cheaper than following the rules, especially if the chances of getting caught are now even further reduced. According to a report by the policy research center Good Jobs First, the first nine months of 2025 saw “a 66 percent decrease from the average penalties during the same time periods over the previous 17 years.” Health and safety penalties dropped 47 percent, and enforcement cases declined 35 percent.
And even when something catastrophic happens, like the incident at Prospect Valley Dairy, OSHA is also levying fewer fines than anticipated, Barab said. Prospect Ranch LLC was fined approximately $85,000 — down from an initial Department of Labor proposal of $132,406 —for six violations, all of which is it contesting.
Barab expected the fines levied against Prospect Ranch LLC “for such an egregious incident and loss of life” to be classified as “willful” violations, which are assigned when there is disregard for worker safety or neglect. (“Willful” is a step up from “serious,” which is how OSHA classified the offenses that lead to the six deaths.) Berkowitz explained that if Prospect Ranch LLC had been cited as willful, the penalties could have each been more than $150,000 each, dwarfing the fines the dairy received.
In a February letter to Department of Labor officials, six Democratic U.S. Senators noted that, in 2025, “willful violations” found during inspections decreased 42 percent from the same period in 2024. Civil Eats was unable to verify the data the senators cited for this point.
“[T]his reduction in findings of willful violations indicates that OSHA inspectors may be being encouraged to issue citations for lesser violations, allowing employers who commit serious safety violations to avoid facing proportional consequences,” the senators wrote.
