ACCURATE TRACKING AND MONITORING OF COMMERCIAL AGRICULTURAL PESTICIDE USE

About the Program

Category: County Administration and Management (Best in Category)

Year: 2015

The San Bernardino County Department of Agriculture / Weights & Measures is tasked with providing enforcement oversight of commercial applications of Agricultural Pesticides. Determining whether every pesticide application complies with California laws and regulations has previously involved hand sorted paper forms. In 2011, the county began using a new state wide database, the CalAg Permits pesticide use and permit system, and all previous County pesticide use records since 2008 were added to the searchable database. However, searches for location specific pesticide use records were still problematic because locations had historically been assigned random "Site ID" numbers which were not searchable. To address this, in July 2014, the Department began a process to convert all active Site ID's to something more accurate and searchable, Assessor Parcel Numbers (APN's), which are unique to each individual parcel of land. This has improved service by allowing staff to reduce time spent researching the database and has strengthened the County’s ability to provide consistent and accurate enforcement and customer service. Benefits were seen within the first few months as the Department has been able to quickly and accurately respond to requests for data regarding certain pesticide uses on specific parcels of land in the County.