HEALTH AND SAFETY UPDATE: COVID-19

March 13, 2020

We are certainly in an unprecedented time as the World Health Organization announced that COVID-19 is now a global pandemic.  The Director-General of WHO asks us to focus on “prevention, preparedness, public health, political leadership, and most of all, people,” because, as he explains, “we’re in this together.”

Today and every day our highest priority is the health and safety of our employees, clients, and all the partners with whom we work.  In fact, it’s a Cascade core value.  COVID-19 is a serious issue and we are treating it as such.  Our Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS), Human Resources, and Executive teams are working closely together to continuously monitor recommendations from the CDC, WHO, State Health Departments, and local community health officials as events rapidly unfold.

I would like to take this opportunity to share with you the actions implemented in the last two weeks to minimize risk of exposure.

Issued multiple employee communications on the importance of this issue, with guidance on hand washing, social distancing, reporting an illness, and other CDC recommendations

• Updated and communicated our Business Continuity, Bloodborne Pathogen, and Pandemic Preparedness plans to include specific guidance on COVID-19
• Encouraged employees to work from home (when their job allows) if there are concerns about potential exposure
• Refraining from or deferring non-essential travel. Travel is limited to instances that are essential to our operation, can only be completed by physically being present, and do not create an unacceptable health hazard, travel to project sites is considered essential travel
• Postponing, canceling, or moving to a digital platform all in-person meetings and large group gatherings
• Refraining from attendance of conferences, workshops, and other large industry events
• Postponed our own large company meeting planned for late March

We have not experienced any disruption in services and fully expect to meet the needs of our clients across the United States.

We expect the situation to continue to evolve over the upcoming weeks.  Our team will continue to provide updates and implement additional process and policy updates focused on health and safety, prevention, preparedness, public health, and most of all, people.

Cascade has always had a commitment to providing services where safety is paramount to everything we do.  Working together, we will get through this unnerving situation and continue to prosper into the future.

Sincerely,

John W. Cowdery
CEO
Cascade Environmental