Califorina’s Wine Industry is a $74bn business, including 3,600 wineries which produce 2-8 gallons of wastewater for every gallon of wine, with the largest wineries producing up to 500,000gpd. Winery wastewater is considered “high-strength” due to high biological oxygen demand (BOD) and suspended solids that can include reuse, fats, oils, Roundup/herbicides/pesticides, and salts. Throughout California, farmers’ discharge of wastewater has led to hundreds of thousands of acres of fallow land from contaminated soils, with certain toxins showing up in freshwater resources. The new regulations require 1,500 of the largest wineries to impose stricter rules on monitoring and reducing the winery wastewater environmental impacts, including caps on the amount of processed water that can be disposed of both above and below-ground. With its ability to dramatically reduce wastewater volumes, ECOVAP is well-position to address these new regulatory challenges.

Article:
California to impose first statewide rules for winery wastewater, marking new era

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