Dumol Winery, Windsor

The Dumol Winery in Windsor, California, was completed in time for the crush of 2008. The winery industry typically creates high-strength process wastewater generated by washing down crushing equipment, tanks, barrels, and other processes of winery operations. At Dumol, Carlile • Macy’s environmental engineers designed a water treatment system to pretreat this high-strength wastewater prior to discharge to the municipal sewer system. In addition to saving significant waste discharge fees, this sustainable wastewater design allows for possible on-site water recycling uses. The main treatment system consists of two underground concrete tanks preceded by a Hydroscreen™ inclined wedgewire filter that removes and dewaters any solids in the flushed process water. Utilizing bioreactor equipment supplied by SludgeHammer™, a compressor injects air and creates mixing and recirculation of the primary tank’s 5000 gallons of water, inoculating it with specialized bacteria that is capable of rapidly consuming soluble wastes in the process water. From this bioreactor tank, water next flows to a settling tank and then discharges to the sewer lateral after passing through an effluent filter with highly on-site treated wastewater. This cost-effective system is very low-maintenance and space-efficient. Provisions have been made to install an irrigation pump and final polishing equipment to connect to the landscape irrigation system, should that ever become desirable. Over the first few months of operation, the system has produced excellent water quality and performance is continuing to be monitored by Carlile • Macy.