Environmental forensics has been defined as the scientific investigation of criminal or civil offenses against the environment. This broad definition encompasses investigations that run the gamut from arson to poaching to chemical contamination of natural resources. The scientific methods brought to bear in these investigations are also quite broad. In cases of arson, investigators may rely on traditional criminal forensic techniques such as fingerprints and tire tread marks. Poaching investigations increasingly rely on relatively new forensic techniques such as DNA evidence. Chemometric methods are common in environmental forensic investigations, in particular, in cases involving pollutant source allocation. The challenge is to determine how cleanup costs (or in the case of natural resource damage claims, redress costs) will be split among multiple, potentially responsible, parties. Regulatory agencies and potentially responsible parties seldom agree regarding equitable cost‐allocation. Similarly, potentially responsible parties rarely agree among themselves. Each party must make their case to a regulatory agency, an arbitrator, perhaps even a jury. The case inevitably depends on the analysis of huge amounts of environmental chemical data, and that in turn depends on environmental chemometrics.