Wine Wastewater Issues

When you make wine you have waste. There's the solid waste that can be fairly easily dealt with and then there's the waste water that needs to be handle much more caredully. So much so that the Department of Ecology has proposed a General Winery Permit to allow wineries of a certain size the ability to handle this waste water within a set of guidelines. Stuart Childs, Senior Scientist with Kennedy/Jenks Consultants recently spoke with winemakers and industry people about when wineries typically see their most need.

CHILDS: You're spiking in September, October, November, that's what you'd sort of expect. A big winery might have 90 days, a small winery a much smaller amount but even a non-crush facility and a small winery are going to have 36% of their annual water flow in the 60-90 day period. That's an important thing because that's a lot of water and if you are irrigating with that water it's not the greatest time of year and if you are a municipality it's all coming at once you're going to treat that sort of thing, so you need to be aware of this.

Childs says there is a lot of variance in the amount of waste water different wineries produce in the course of a season and equally as many reasons like filtration and the use of barrels and the wineries sanitation methods.

That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.