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DEQ oversight for 2bbl Nano?

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  • DEQ oversight for 2bbl Nano?

    Hello all,

    Hoping someone can advise. Working on buildout for a small brewery/taproom in Michigan. Local Health Department has jurisdiction over the brewery area, water well, and septic system, and our plan has met with approval thus far.

    We were planning to side stream brewery solids, and send wastewater to a 1000 gallon tank out back, which would be pumped out regularly. The existing septic system is barely sufficient for our two new bathrooms and the bar sinks/glasswasher, so there is no way we can send process water into it. Winter is a problem with pumping out regularly,
    but more urgent at the moment is that state regulations and/or statutes say the DEQ has jurisdiction over process wastewater. They are now trying to determine if a residential equivalency might apply, punting jurisdiction back to the local Health Department. Pretty sure the HD will require a dedicated process water drain field--not the end of the world, and much more straightforward than what the DEQ might require, even for irrigation.

    What they wanted from me to help decide was detailed "pollutant" numbers for our brewery, which can't legally produce any beer (or wastewater) yet. BOD, nitrogen, and phosphorus were what they wanted, and I found some ranges from published studies, but the applicability of the numbers is questionable given extreme differences of scale. Obviously I can't test a sample of our wastewater yet.

    Might anyone have a more accurate estimate for our likely wastewater composition? Wastewater on a brewday vs that on a cleaning day would help even more. Has anyone dealt with the DEQ in Michigan, and be willing to give some advice?


    Patrick S. McGinnity
    Whiskey Point Brewing Company
    Beaver Island, MI
    Last edited by Uncle Puck; 11-27-2017, 10:21 PM.
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