What was applied?
Identify the products, active ingredients, application dates, treatment boundaries, landowner, and applicator. Keep the original records behind every investigation.
Forestry herbicides · California waters
Follow the Chemical.
Test the Water.
Trace the Source.
We test and monitor for herbicide runoff from forestry projects—and investigate where it came from.
Our mission
Clean water.
Clear answers.
California Water Monitoring Project tests and monitors California’s waters for herbicide runoff from forestry projects.
We combine field sampling, laboratory testing, and herbicide application records to identify chemicals entering the water and investigate their sources.
Our goal is to connect findings to specific forestry projects and treatment sites, evaluate whether water-quality protections are working, and publish the evidence to support project-level accountability.
Project-level accountability
Finding it is only
the beginning.
Where did it go?
Use field sampling and laboratory testing to investigate the waters below a treatment area, with attention to drainage pathways, weather, and timing.
What does the evidence show?
Bring records and measurements together to investigate a source, explain uncertainty, and identify the project-level connections the evidence supports.
Working forests and clean water
Both matter to California.
Logging and forest products have been part of California’s history, economy and rural communities for generations. CWMP is not opposed to forestry, logging, reforestation or responsible vegetation management.
Our concern is narrower and measurable: when herbicides are used on forestry projects, do those chemicals remain within the treatment area, or do they move into runoff and California’s waters?
Water is one of California’s most precious shared resources. Independent monitoring can show when protections are working and can identify problems when they are not. That information benefits responsible landowners, regulators, communities and families alike.
California should not have to choose between working forests and clean water. Responsible forestry and credible water monitoring can—and should—exist side by side.
From rules to results
Did the protections
work?
CWMP is, in practical terms, an independent field audit of whether California’s forestry-herbicide safeguards are producing the environmental result they are supposed to produce.
The regulatory framework administered by the Department of Pesticide Regulation, the Water Boards and the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection is intended to control pesticide use, limit off-site movement and protect water quality. We believe the current system is not doing enough to prevent forestry herbicides from reaching runoff, streams and other waters.
The testDo the rules work where the herbicide is actually applied?
We compare what the rules and project documents require with what happens in the field: what was applied, where it was applied, what runoff leaves the project, and what the laboratory finds downstream. That turns a paper safeguard into a measurable environmental outcome.
We distinguish what a protection requires, whether it was implemented, and what was measured downstream. Those are separate questions, and the evidence may support different answers at different project sites.
The work builds on the application-aware approach in EMC-2022-001 while pursuing CWMP’s own goal of project-level source investigation.
Explore the research foundation
Evidence the public can examine
Show the work.
We aim to publish the source records, methods, sampling context, laboratory results, and analysis behind our findings. Readers should be able to see how a conclusion was reached—not simply be asked to accept it.
Our evidence standard is straightforward: document what is known, distinguish it from what is inferred, and identify the questions that remain.
Read our evidence standardA statewide effort starts locally.
Help collect the evidence in your county, or contribute the scientific expertise to interpret it.
Training and public awareness
Build the skills.
Expand the monitoring.
Training and public awareness are part of CWMP’s mission. Lassen and Plumas counties will serve as the model. As funding and volunteers grow, we will train and assist residents in other California counties to run the same monitoring process.
Training will cover obtaining pesticide use reports, writing sampling plans, collecting and shipping samples, publishing laboratory results, and following up with agencies. Our website and public map of sample locations will grow with each participating county.
We will help communities understand the application records, what the laboratory results show, and how residents can participate in monitoring their local watersheds.
Who we are
Experience in the forests.
Evidence from the water.
Many of the sites that need testing are difficult to reach: remote drainages, steep treated slopes and small creeks far from maintained roads. That is not an obstacle for us. The founder and his team are experienced in the forests of California and can access these locations. We will go where the Water Board, DPR and the county Agriculture Departments have refused to go.