Can your boss force you to work under a searing sun producing unhealthy heat levels or through the caustic smoke caused by any wildfires?

Many workers are so desperate for work that they may forgo workplace safety or remain silent about such issues.

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, thousands of people become sick from occupational heat exposure every year; some of those cases end in fatalities.

“Most outdoor fatalities, 50 percent to 70 percent, occur in the first few days of working in warm or hot environments because the body needs to build a tolerance to the heat gradually over time,” OSHA‘s website states. “The process of building tolerance is called heat acclimatization. Lack of acclimatization represents a major risk factor for fatal outcomes.

“Occupational risk factors for heat illness include heavy physical activity, warm or hot environmental conditions, lack of acclimatization, and wearing clothing that holds in body heat.”

Here’s what workers need to know if supervisors try to force you to work through a heat wave or other hazardous weather conditions.

Can my boss force me to work through a heat wave?

There is no specific federal temperature cutoff at which OSHA says employers must send everyone home during a heat wave.

According to OSHA, only California, Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington have specific heat‑safety standards for workers. Several other states have heat guidance plans, which are not codified into law.

OSHA does identify which professions are most susceptible to heat-related illnesses — outdoor ones include construction (especially roadwork and similar work), roofing, and landscaping; indoor ones include electrical utilities, manufacturing, and warehousing.

So, your boss can make you work in hot weather, but they aren’t allowed to do it without basic protections when conditions are clearly dangerous.

What if the air is full of wildfire smoke?

For most, workers still rely on federal OSHA’s general “don’t expose people to serious hazards” rule — which usually means your boss can keep you on the schedule during smoky or sweltering days. However, your boss is supposed to monitor conditions, reduce your exposure where possible and provide appropriate protective gear.

When to report unsafe work conditions to OSHA

You can file a confidential complaint to OSHA online any time you believe working conditions are unsafe or unhealthful or that your employer is not following OSHA standards.

That includes serious heat or smoke situations where your employer is not providing basics like water, rest, shade or appropriate protective gear, or is ignoring symptoms that are being reported by workers.

OSHA does suggest workers raise the issue internally first to your supervisor, HR department or union, and document what’s happening. If nothing changes, you can then file a complaint.

Editor’s notes: This article first appeared in the Delaware News Journal and then was distributed on the USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.

Also, workers can learn more about Oregon OSHA rules and guidelines concerning heat illness prevention by calling 503-378-3272 or visiting https://osha.oregon.gov/.

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Salem-based DeSantis Landscapes has garnered a national award for its workplace safety efforts and near-perfect safety record.

The landscaping firm will be honored with an overall gold safety achievement award for its exceptional record in 2013, said Dean DeSantis, president of the company.

The selection process for the honor, part of Professional Landcare Network’s National Safety Awards, was based on the number of vehicle accidents, lost time due to injury or illness and a safety analysis sent to the Occupational Safety & Health Administration, DeSantis said.

The company’s 76 employees had zero vehicle accidents and only one injury over 140,549 hours of work, according to the company’s application for the award.

DeSantis also submitted the company’s written safety program, which it uses on every project, he said.

“One of my visions for my company is to be the most professional company in our service area, and to me, being professional means being safe,” he said. “We develop site-specific safety plans for each project we work on.”

The award will be presented at the Professional Landcare Network’s annual convention in Louisville, Ky., on Oct. 22-24.

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Plans to expand the Portland Japanese Garden continue to move forward.

has been chosen as the architect of record for the project. The firm will join , a Japan-based landscape design firm, in designing the expansion, which will include a cultural and education center, a gift store and a tea house.

In addition to the two firms, a top-notch team of independent landscape architects has been hired to help, including former garden curators Hoichi Kurisu and Hachiro Sakakibara.

“The strategy for the landscape design portion of the project is a split design,” said Ingrid Arnett, communications manager for the garden. “Hoichi Kurisu is the foremost designer of Japanese gardens in North America. Hachiro Sakakibara is the foremost Japanese garden designer in Japan. Their participation is of great significance to the garden as a nod to the past and the present.”

The project will enter the schematic design phase at the end of January 2013, Arnett said. By next fall, design plans should be close to complete.

The expansion will build on the work of original designer Takuma Tono, who designed the Washington Park attraction between 1963 and 1967.

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Local landscape architects and students got together for a soiree last month to celebrate their achievements.

The Oregon Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects held its annual award ceremony Oct. 13. As part of the ceremony, a large number of awards and honors were given based on seven different categories: general design, residential design, analysis and planning, transportation, research and communication, student projects and un-built work.

Jeff Schnabel, Portland State professor and former president of ASLA, started the ceremony by honoring students and education professionals in the profession, including professors and students at the University of Oregon.

Shortly after, project awards were given, including the top honor Award of Excellence, which went to for its work on the Bud Clark Commons. An honor award was given to for its work on the Nancy Russell Overlook at Cape Horn in the Columbia River Gorge. Another honor award was given to for its work on the Martin Luther King Jr. Gateway and Heritage Markers in Northeast Portland.

Mayer/Reed, Walker Macy and 2 Ink Studio also received merit awards. received a merit award, too.

The winners were decided by a five-person jury made up of local design professionals and professors.

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The Oregon chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects presented its annual design awards earlier this month as part of the . Thirty projects were submitted in this year’s competition. The jury included Fernanda D’Agostino, Maggi Johnson, Sam Williamson, Joseph Readdy and John van Staveren.

	GENERAL DESIGN: Honor Award Port of Portland Headquarters Landscape architect: Mayer/Reed Client: Port of Portland Consultants: HNTB Corp., KPFF Consulting Engineers, PAE Consulting Engineers, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects
	UN-BUILT WORK: Honor Award Steel Bridge Skatepark Landscape architect: Lango Hansen Landscape Architects Client: City of Portland Consultants: DAO Architecture, Grindline Inc.
	GENERAL DESIGN: Merit Award Brookside Children’s Garden Landscape architect: Walker Macy Client: Cranbrook Educational Community Consultants: ECT, Larry Kirkland Studio, Soil and Material Engineers
	GENERAL DESIGN: Merit Award Cooper Mountain Nature Park Landscape architect: VIGIL-AGRIMIS Inc. Client: Metro Consultants: Aron Faegre & Associates, Bluedot Group, Christine Bordette, Dean Apostol, Foster Gambee Geotechnical PC, KPFF Consulting Engineers, PAE Consulting Engineers
	General Design: Merit Award LOTT Clean Water Alliance Regional Service Center Landscape Architect: Murase Associates Client: LOTT Clean Water Alliance Consultants: AHBL Inc., Aldrich Pears Associates, LUMA Lighting Design, PAE Consulting Engineers, The Miller Hull Partnership, Waterscape Solutions
	RESIDENTIAL DESIGN: Merit Award Mosier Retreat Landscape architect: Bennett Burns Clients: Andrew Rowe and Bennett Burns Consultants: Tegman Design
	ANALYSIS & PLANNING: Merit Award Swan Creek Park Master Plan Landscape architect: MIG Inc. Client: Metro Parks Tacoma Consultants: GeoEngineers Inc.
	ANALYSIS & PLANNING: Merit Award Cottonwood Canyon State Park Master Plan Landscape architect: Walker Macy Client: Oregon Parks and Recreation Department Consultants: Architectural Cost Consultants, GRI Geotechnical Engineers, Hennebery Eddy Architects, Kittelson & Associates, KPFF Consulting Engineers, PAE Electrical Engineers
	RESEARCH & COMMUNICATION: Merit Award Clean Water Services Low Impact Development Approaches Landscape architect: GreenWorks PC Client: Clean Water Services Consultants: Lori Faha
	UN-BUILT WORK: Merit Award The Fields Park Landscape architect: Office of Cheryl Barton Client: Portland Parks and Recreation Consultants: GeoDesign Inc., Koch Landscape Architecture, KPFF Consulting Engineers, Opsis Architecture, PAE Consulting Engineers Inc., Roman Fountains, The Bookin Group
	STUDENT WORK: Honorable Mention From Landmark to Place Students: Justin Demeter, Alexandria Donati, David Fothergill, Michael LeClere, Amanda Loomis, Katie Martin, Alex Phillips, Jennifer Purcell, Pete Rutkowski, Vivian Schoung, Claudi Sims, Jamie Whitney, Renee Wilkinson, Holly Workman
	STUDENT WORK: Honorable Mention Whitaker Neighborhood Improvement Project Student: Logan BIngle
	STUDENT WORK: Honorable Mention Vegetation-Bearing Garden Wall and Enclosure Students: Alexandria Donati, Holly Workman

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Today is the last day to receive an early-bird registration discount for Landscape Fusion, the American Society of Landscape Architects‘ 2011 symposium, which will take place in Portland on April 15-16.

The symposium will feature a number of sessions as well as a full-day charrette that will examine design possibilities for open spaces in Portland’s Central Eastside Industrial District.

The cost to attend is $145 for ASLA members, $100 for association ASLA members and $170 for non-ASLA members who register before March 15. Costs increase by $25 thereafter.

There is a separate charge of $25 for ASLA members and $45 for non-ASLA members to participate in the design charrette.

For more information about the symposium, including registration, go to the .

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Bills that would change – slightly – the way Oregon landscape contractors do business sailed through the state House Business and Labor Committee this week and are on their way to the House floor.

would divide the required test for landscape construction licenses. One section of the test measures a person’s ability to own or manage a landscape contracting business. But Michael Snyder, administrator of the Oregon Landscape Contractors Board, told committee members that many contractors are not inclined to be managers.

“Not every landscape construction professional needs to or desires to own or manage a landscape contracting business,” he said. “They are content to be employees providing the technical expertise and to directly supervise unlicensed employees.”

So the bill would allow the state to give licenses to people who know the technical side of landscaping but not all management aspects.

“For those who want to own or manage a landscape contracting business, a 16-hour course and an examination relating the laws, rules and business practices of running a landscape contracting business would be required,” Snyder added.

That was good enough for committee members. They sent the bill to the floor without debate, recommending its approval by the full House.

would require landscape contractors to provide workers’ compensation insurance.

Committee members greeted this idea with equal enthusiasm. Chairman Mike Schaufler, D-Happy Valley, said it is “worth its weight in gold.”

Landscape contractors with employees already pay workers’ compensation once they reach a certain level of income. The problem is that current state law is vague, Snyder told committee members.

“The current workers’ compensation law does not use the term ’employee’ but uses the term ‘subject worker,’ which, though the individual may be an employee, workers’ compensation is not required if the business does not meet the threshold of wages set by the workers’ compensation board,” he said.

House Bill 2157 would clean up existing law.

All landscape contractors would have to register as exempt or nonexempt. Exempt contractors would have to prove they have no workers – or that any laborers brought on for a project are covered by workers’ compensation.

Nonexempt contractors would have regular employees and be required to provide compensation.

“When workers are not covered by workers’ compensation on a jobsite, there is an unknown liability to the consumer and for those who play by the rules and pay the overhead associated with workers’ compensation and do not pay cash, fair competition is not promoted,” Snyder said.

Committee members breezed through their Wednesday agenda in less than a half hour. However, the co-chairman, Bill Kennemer, R-Oregon City, warned his colleagues and audience members to expect a busy session.

“The next time you visit this committee, expect to spend the whole day with us,” he said.

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Designer Suenn Ho respects her elders.

After growing up in Hong Kong, the senior designer has paid tribute to her ancestors with projects including Portland’s Lan Su Chinese Garden and redesigned streetscapes in Portland’s Chinatown.

But for her latest project, Ho will commemorate an elder of the architecture profession. A remnant of Robert Murase‘s demolished park will be incorporated in a garden honoring Chinese immigrants in Astoria.

Murase was a prominent Northwest landscape architect and the founder of Portland firm . When Ho moved to the Northwest to begin a career as a university architecture professor, she was moved by Murase’s treatment of stone for projects such as Portland’s Japanese American Historic Plaza. When the city of Astoria asked her to design a Chinese garden at Ninth Street Park, the last project Murase worked on before he died in 2005, she jumped at the opportunity.

“As a Chinese designer, you have to respect and live up to former generations,” Ho said. “It’s a cultural story that you’re passing on. I’ve always respected the way Murase used natural materials the way they are.”

The city of Astoria chose Ho for her work in Chinatowns such as Portland’s. After a prominent resident refused to meet in Astoria’s Columbia River Maritime Museum because it contained no history of Chinese immigrants in the area, Mayor Willis Van Dusen decided it was time to pay tribute.

“This Chinese citizen, Duncan Law, created our Seafood Consumer Center,” Van Dusen said. “For the Chinese not to be mentioned in our museum was inexcusable. They’ve since fixed that, but the garden presented a bigger opportunity.”

Ho began to think about how she could alter Murase’s industrial park, which was comprised of stone planks and benches, to become a garden depicting the lives of Chinese cannery and railroad workers in Astoria.

Before long, Ho got a call from the city. Murase’s park had been demolished to make space for her new design. Only a low stone wall remained.

“I couldn’t figure out how to respond (to the demolition),” Ho said. “I had this clean slate with this historic concrete bunker on it no one could move. I thought about Murase and decided this project would have no paint, no caulking and no artificial materials. I wanted it to look ancient and use what was there.”

While Murase chose stone for his park, Ho chose steel, granite and Northwest timber for the garden. Working with a philanthropist who owns a foundry in China, six groups of bronze artwork were commissioned to be forged at Shaanxi Yuan Kun Sculptural Arts in Xian, China. The bronze works tell the stories of immigrants who weren’t allowed to fish, but worked tirelessly in the canneries until their feet swelled. Nursery rhymes and Confucian sayings hammered into long, bronze scrolls tell the tales of the east, while the ground, made of railroad ties, tells of work immigrants found in the west.

The more pieces that arrived for the garden, the more confident Ho became that she would be doing justice to her elders, including Murase. His remaining stone wall will be extended within the garden to represent Astoria’s sea wall. Legend has it that Chinese immigrants built the wall that has kept Astoria safe from flooding and fires.

“Our history goes beyond fortune cookies,” Ho said. “The design tries to merge those histories of the east and west. The garden is named ‘The Garden of the Surging Waves,’ which in Chinese has a double meaning of hardship, reflecting immigrants in the old days and the closeness of the garden to the river.”

When Astoria celebrates its bicentennial next year, the Garden of Surging Waves will be its legacy gift. Once an additional $800,000 of funding is secured, Ho’s garden will become a part of Astoria as Murase’s park was. If Murase were to walk through the garden, Ho thinks he would be pleased.

“I’d love to have a critique from him,” Ho said.

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What has four legs, four stomachs and the ability to cut land-clearing costs in half? The humble goat; it has become an ally for people looking for greener landscaping methods.

While gas-powered Weedwhackers can clear land of unwanted plants faster, more cities and businesses are finding that goats can do it more sustainably and for less money. Goats have an insatiable appetite for plants that other animals wouldn’t touch, so they are a favorite landscaper in rural areas. But now they are being used in urban areas, too.

A crew of goats from Portland’s is currently chewing up 10 acres of invasive blackberry bushes at the AmberGlen corporate campus in Hillsboro. From big goats with horns to pygmy goats slightly larger than house cats, a motley crew of 40 can clear up to 3,600 square feet of land a day, according to Georgina Steiner, owner of Goat Rentals Northwest.

“We give the goats a job they really enjoy,” Steiner said. “That’s eating.”

AmberGlen property manager KG Investment first heard about the goats from its landscaper, Pacific Landscape. Invasive blackberry bushes had overtaken 10 acres of the property, said Kim Schoenfelder, project manager with KG Investment. Because a creek runs beneath the property, the use of bulldozers and herbicides raised concerns about erosion and possible contamination of the creek.

But Schoenfelder had concerns, too, about letting farm animals onto the property. Would the goats be on leashes or running wild? What would happen if one escaped? But the practice of using goats to clear land is nothing new, said Brian Benedict, area manager for Pacific Landscape. States with wide open spaces, like Montana and Idaho, use goats frequently. Goat Rentals Northwest surrounds its herd with an electric fence.

So Schoenfelder agreed to take Pacific Landscape’s advice.

“At first we jokingly brought it up in staff meetings,” Benedict said. “I guess we’re getting back to these things people used to do back in the day.”

Goats’ eating abilities can be attributed to their four-chambered stomachs. Plants are softened within the animal’s first stomach, then regurgitated into a slimy mass called cud, which it chews again. Once the goat’s meal has been processed by all four chambers, the plant matter is broken down so much that it is unlikely to grow back, even if it’s left behind as fertilizer.

To keep the goats healthy, Steiner first surveys land for poisonous or dangerous plants. To clear an area, Goat Rentals Northwest uses screens to flatten plants that are too tall for the goats to reach. Also, water bowls are laid down to keep the animals hydrated. Once the goats have cleared an area, a crew comes in to pick up any debris left behind.

“I’m amazed by what the goats have been able to clear in a week,” Schoenfelder said. “It takes longer, but there are no herbicides and it costs half of the money we paid to bring in machines.”

The only drawback to the goats, Benedict said, was the timing. By fall, blackberry bushes have become woody and tough for the goats to tear through, so they may need 30 days to do the work. Next time, Benedict would like the goats put out in springtime, when the plants are more young and tender.

Business is booming for Steiner, who started her rental operation a year ago with one goat. By the end of the year, she plans to have 200 goats to keep up with demand. The goats come from a rescue group in California and have a long-term home on Steiner’s property. Her clients include KXL Radio and Cricket Wireless, which use the animals to eat blackberry bushes surrounding their telecommunications towers.

“We normally would have our staff out there with Weedwhackers,” said Bill Ashenden, general sales manager for Alpha Broadcasting, which owns KXL Radio. “Our engineers have told us the goats are keeping the blackberry bushes back effectively. Environmentally, it’s a lot easier, and these workers don’t need health insurance.”

The city of Wilsonville for the last eight years has used goats from Hawley Land and Cattle Co. to remove English Ivy from its Memorial Park. A study commissioned by the city showed that after the goats eat it, the plant hasn’t returned. The goats have been so popular in Wilsonville that the city now has a celebration every year for all things goat, according to Kerry Rappold, natural resources program manager with the city of Wilsonville.

“People look forward to the festival every year,” Rappold said. “The goats are our four-legged environmental stewards.”

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