It is a schedule, not a cliff.
The hard part is not complying. It is knowing what applies to you. The deadline is to enroll, not to finish, and wineries that transition get a five year compliance schedule for most of it. A handful of items run on their own shorter clocks from the day your enrollment issues.
The Statewide Winery Order
One order, adopted in 2021, covering winery process water discharged to land across California. How it reaches you depends on where you are, because some counties run their own program underneath it and some do not.
Where this came from, why Napa is only feeling it now, and whether it is actually enforceable
A survey of all 58 California counties found no second Napa. Napa is the only one with its own winery process water program, a winery specific agreement with a regional board, and a published county deadline. Nine other counties hold some winery permitting role but set no deadline of their own. The remaining 48 run on the statewide Order alone.
That is why there are two county paths above rather than fifty eight. For everywhere else the question is not what your county requires, it is what your regional board has said, and that is answered for all nine boards just below. Counties above are ordered by bonded winery count, from TTB permit records, with the regional board each one sits under. If your county does have something of its own that we have missed, tell us and we will chase it down.
Then the question is what your regional board has said.
Napa and Sonoma are above because their county and their board have actually said something specific. Everywhere else in California, what governs you is your regional water board, and the thing most wineries want to know is whether an existing permit lets them wait. We checked all nine boards. Two have said it in staff reports. Not one has said it in adopted order text. If another county publishes something of its own, it will appear here.
Hatched is in more than one region. Dotted is a county no document places.
Hover or tap a county to see which board holds it. Read as many as you like; the map stays put. The button takes you to that board’s card when you are ready.
This map is navigation, not a determination. Region boundaries follow watersheds, not county lines, so a county tells you where to look rather than which board holds your parcel. The two dotted counties rest on a 2013 fact sheet and nothing better. Everything else here rests on Water Code section 13200, an adopted Basin Plan, or an adopted order.
Not sure which board you are under? It follows the watershed your property drains to, not the county line. Your Notice of Applicability names it, and so does any correspondence you have had from a Water Board.
Whichever region you are in Enrolling works the same way Napa and Sonoma have county programs on top. The other fifty six counties run on the statewide Order alone, which means this path is the whole of it for you.The nine regions are defined by Water Code section 13200, which divides the state by drainage, not by county. It has never been amended since it was enacted in 1969. It uses watershed divides throughout, and where drainage alone would leave a closed basin unassigned it pulls that basin in by name: the Lower Klamath Lake and Lost River Basins in subdivision (a), the Carrizo Plain in (c), and the Goose Lake Basin in (g). It uses a county line in only two places, and in subdivision (e) it runs the boundary along two named streets, Niguel Road and Los Aliso Avenue. Then it hands off: “The regions defined and described in this section shall be as precisely delineated on official maps of the department.”
Which is why a county list is a summary of a hydrologic definition rather than the definition itself. The State Water Board’s own fact sheet presents counties as the unit of assignment and was last updated in June 2013; where it and section 13200 disagree, the statute governs. Three places that catch people out:
- Napa County is split, and most people do not know it. The Napa River watershed and the Napa County part of Suisun Creek are San Francisco Bay Region 2. The Lake Berryessa and Putah Creek watershed in the northeast is Central Valley Region 5, and the San Francisco Bay Board says so itself in Finding 6.a.i of adopted Order No. R2-2020-0034. Snell Valley, Pope Valley, Capell Valley and part of Chiles Valley drain that way. Chiles Valley straddles the divide, so a winery there has to check its own parcel rather than assume.
- Lake County is mostly Central Valley Region 5, not North Coast Region 1. Cache Creek is Clear Lake’s outlet, and it runs east into the Sacramento Valley drainage. The North Coast Board bounds its own region “on the east by the Sacramento Valley drainage, consisting of the basins of Clear Lake, Putah and Cache Creeks”, which is that board placing Clear Lake outside itself. So Lakeport, Kelseyville and the Red Hills AVA sit in Region 5. Region 1’s share is the western edge draining to the Eel and the Russian.
- Temecula Valley is San Diego Region 9, not Santa Ana Region 8. It drains to the Santa Margarita River. The Region 8 boundary divides the Santa Margarita drainage from the San Jacinto, and passes between Lake Elsinore and Murrieta.
- San Luis Obispo County is Central Coast Region 3, all of it. Every winery in the county is on Pacific drainage, and section 13200(c) names the one part that is not, the Carrizo Plain, and assigns it to Region 3 expressly. The 2013 fact sheet’s “very small portions” under Region 5 is the outlier.
There is no working public address lookup. The State Water Board built one and took it off its map page, which now reads that the interactive map is being upgraded. The GIS boundary layer behind it still answers point queries and cites section 13200 as the legal definition, but it is rate limited and its own metadata says it is not a survey document and should not be used for legal determinations. Worth knowing before you go looking: the State Water Board’s own Winery Order page still tells operators to use its map tool, and that link lands on a page saying the map is being upgraded. If you follow it and hit a dead end, that is not you. So the honest route is the one below: ask the board. Read section 13200
The North Coast Board has come closest of any board, in an Executive Officer report rather than in adopted text.
There are a total of 102 regulated wineries in the North Coast Region that are currently authorized to discharge winery waste to land. Staff estimates that 97 of these regulated wineries are eligible for coverage under the General Permit. Consistent with enrollment conditions of the General Permit, these wineries may continue discharging under the authority of their current Order until it expires or comes up for renewal.
Stronger than any other region's statement, because the board is not reciting the rule in the abstract. It applies it to a counted population, 97 of 102 regulated North Coast wineries, and builds a phased enrollment plan on top of it. It remains an Executive Officer report, which is staff material, not the operative language of any order. Note also that Order R1-2021-0001 expired 4 February 2026 and its successor R1-2026-0001, adopted 18 February 2026, carries over dischargers previously enrolled under R1-2021-0001 without a fresh eNOI and TIF, so the underlying orders have moved on since this report. Two limits on that carry-over: it reaches only R1-2021-0001 enrollees, not holders of the separate General WDR R1-2016-0002, and a change to the facility or to the information filed that may affect the quality or quantity of the discharge does not end your coverage, it triggers a filing: Application Process paragraph 3 requires an updated eNOI and TIF. Coverage itself ends only under General Conditions paragraph 14 or on obtaining waste discharge requirements.
North Coast Executive Officer's Report, 4 August 2022, page 4 · 2022-08-04
A correction: this board does publish a winery mailbox. It is on the State Water Board's Winery Order contacts table rather than on the board's own Contact Us page, which does not render. The general address below is the one BCG files North Coast regional reports to. Beyond the inboxes, the board runs its winery work through its wine, beverage and food processor program, staffed out of the groundwater permitting unit, and it names all three people with direct lines. Use a mailbox for filings or when you do not know who to ask, and a named person when you do.
- Winery Order mailboxRB1-Winery@waterboards.ca.gov
- General board inbox, and where reports are filednorthcoast@waterboards.ca.gov
- Kelsey Cody, Groundwater Permitting Unit SupervisorKelsey.Cody@waterboards.ca.gov
- Kelsey Cody, direct(707) 576-2347
- Rachel Prat, Environmental ScientistRachel.Prat@waterboards.ca.gov
- Rachel Prat, direct(707) 576-2542
- Lynette Shipsey, Water Resource Control EngineerLynette.Shipsey@waterboards.ca.gov
- Lynette Shipsey, direct(707) 576-2460
The Russian River and Laguna de Santa Rosa side of Sonoma County sits in this region, and it has its own path here covering the North Coast waiver, the 3,000 gallon tier and the 5:1 ratio. The Sonoma Creek and Petaluma River side of the same county is Region 2, so check which half you drain to first.
Region 2 has said it too, also in a staff report rather than in adopted text.
Existing wineries, except those currently regulated, must seek coverage under the General Order by January 20, 2024. Existing wineries that have regulatory oversight may continue discharging under that authority until those permits expire or come up for renewal.
A staff summary report prepared for an information item, not the operative language of any order. It says wineries that 'have regulatory oversight', a general phrase, rather than naming a regional order, and its wording closely tracks the statewide order's own. Region 1 states the same rule more concretely, applied to a counted population, so this is the second strongest of the nine rather than the strongest.
Region 2 staff summary report, item 8, page 1 · 2021-09-08
A dedicated winery mailbox, and it is monitored. We have used it.
- Winery Order inboxRB2-Winery@waterboards.ca.gov
- Board main line(510) 622-2300
Two counties here have paths of their own, with far more than a regional answer can give. Napa County covers the county program and the January 2027 date, and applies to the Napa River watershed rather than the whole county: the Lake Berryessa side is Region 5. Sonoma County applies to the Sonoma Creek, Petaluma River and Tolay Creek side.
The Central Coast Board told wineries the opposite: the waiver expired, enroll.
Waiver expired / Enroll in Statewide Order by Jan 2024
Said of the R3-2017-0020 waiver category, and the timing is the whole point. Order R3-2017-0020 has two parts. Provision 16 expired the WAIVER on 21 September 2022; the General WDR portion of the same order is not stated to expire at all. Attachment 1 to the adopted Order R3-2021-0008 of 18 June 2021 does list eight wineries with 'R3-2017-0020 or Statewide Winery Permit' as their destination, which reads at first like the board pointing the other way. It does not: that attachment predates the waiver's expiry by fifteen months. A board naming a live waiver as a destination in 2021 and then telling wineries in 2024 that the waiver has expired is one sequence, not a conflict. What is worth knowing is that the General WDR half of R3-2017-0020 did not expire with it.
Region 3 winery webinar slides, 2024, page 6 · 2024
Region 3 appears to be handling enrollment dates by letter rather than by web posting. People working in the region tell us that existing wineries were sent letters giving them their enrollment date, that at least some of those letters extended the date without naming a new one, and that a further letter setting a new date is expected within months. We know of facilities that received them. Reported more loosely, and worth treating as looser: a winery in serious noncompliance, or one expanding its facility, may not have been given the same extension.
What to do with it. If this is right, your date is in your letter and not on any website, so the January 2024 date above is not automatically yours. An extension is also not the same as having no date, and reading it that way is the expensive version of this mistake. If you never received a letter, or cannot find it, ask the winery mailbox below and get the answer in writing.
This is the softest source on this site, and it says so on purpose. It is second hand, we have not seen the letter text, and you cannot check it the way you can check an order. It is here because a Central Coast winery reading only the published record would conclude it is years past a deadline, and that may not be true. Told to us 1 September 2026.
Three spellings of the winery mailbox are published in different documents. All are shown, the statewide contacts table first; if one bounces, try the next.
- Winery mailbox, per the statewide contacts tableRB3-Winery@waterboards.ca.gov
- Winery mailbox, per the guidance PDFRB3-winery@waterboards.ca.gov
- Winery mailbox, per the Nov 2024 MRP letterR3-Winery@waterboards.ca.gov
- WDR program line(805) 549-3891
The Los Angeles Board has published no regional winery guidance of any kind.
No regional winery program page and no regional winery guidance document was found. The 2024 regional webinar slide URL returns HTTP 404. Absence of evidence is weak evidence here: there may be nothing to find, or nothing published.
No regional winery guidance document found.
No winery-specific contact, and the board publishes no email on its own Contact Us page or home page either, only a phone number and a staff directory. The address below is the one the State Water Board's Winery Order contacts table routes Region 4 winery questions to. It is a general regional inbox, not a winery one.
- General regional inbox, per the statewide contacts tableinfo4@waterboards.ca.gov
- Board main line(213) 576-6600
The Central Valley Board told wineries that after February 2025 an unenrolled discharge is unpermitted.
After February 2025, if you have not enrolled under the Winery Order or registered as exempt status, your discharge will be unpermitted
Region 5 is the sharpest case in the state. Its winery waiver expired 20 February 2025 and its successor, R5-2025-0002, removed winery coverage entirely. Wineries were told to move by February 2025, a deadline that has already passed. Region 5 also gates issuance of the Notice of Applicability on CV-SALTS enrollment, a precondition with no analogue in any other region.
Region 5 winery webinar slides, 2024, page 11 · 2024
A correction: this region does publish winery mailboxes, three of them, and which one you use depends on which office covers you rather than on anything about your facility. The three offices are assigned by an explicit county list, not by valley, and the lists cut across the valleys: Rancho Cordova holds San Joaquin, Alameda, Contra Costa and Stanislaus, while Fresno holds Tuolumne and San Benito. Check the board's own Non-15 contacts page for the county lists rather than guessing from geography. If you are not sure, the Non-15 waste-to-land program is the one that issues this region's Winery Order NOAs, so its manager is the other right door.
- Winery mailbox, Rancho CordovaRB5S-Winery@waterboards.ca.gov
- Winery mailbox, FresnoRB5F-Winery@waterboards.ca.gov
- Winery mailbox, ReddingRB5R-Winery@waterboards.ca.gov
- Alexander Mushegan, Non-15 Program ManagerAlexander.Mushegan@waterboards.ca.gov
- Non-15 program manager(559) 488-4397
- Rancho Cordova office(916) 464-3291
The Lahontan Board has published no regional winery guidance of any kind.
No regional winery program page and no regional winery guidance document was found. The 2024 regional webinar slide URL returns HTTP 404.
No regional winery guidance document found.
No winery contact published. Two different general addresses are published for this board: the statewide Winery Order contacts table gives one, the board's own pages give another. Both are shown, the statewide one first, because that is the route a Winery Order question is meant to take.
- General inbox, per the statewide contacts tableinfo6@waterboards.ca.gov
- General inbox, per the board's own pagesRB6-Lahontan@waterboards.ca.gov
- South Lake Tahoe office(530) 542-5400
- Victorville office(760) 241-6583
The Colorado River Basin Board has published no regional winery guidance of any kind.
No regional winery program page and no regional winery guidance document was found. The 2024 regional webinar slide URL returns HTTP 404.
No regional winery guidance document found.
No winery contact published. This is the general regional address, not a winery one.
- General regional inboxinfo7@waterboards.ca.gov
- Regional main line(760) 346-7491
The Santa Ana Board has published no regional winery guidance of any kind.
No regional winery program page and no regional winery guidance document was found. The 2024 regional webinar slide URL returns HTTP 404.
No regional winery guidance document found.
No winery contact published. Two different general addresses are published for this board. Both are shown, the statewide Winery Order contacts table's first, because that is the route a Winery Order question is meant to take.
- General regional inbox, per the statewide contacts tableinfo8@waterboards.ca.gov
- General regional inbox, per the board's own pageregion8info@waterboards.ca.gov
- Regional main line(951) 782-4130
The San Diego Board reserved the right to move waiver enrollees into the statewide Order at any time.
Upon adoption of the State Water Resources Control Board Statewide General Order regulating discharges of wastes from wineries, the San Diego Water Board will evaluate the projects enrolled in this waiver to determine if they should be regulated under the Statewide General Order. Once a determination has been made, the San Diego Water Board may terminate a projects enrollment in this waiver and enroll the qualifying projects in the Statewide General Order.
General Condition B.4 of Order R9-2024-0001. This is the opposite of a guarantee of continued coverage. Separately, the '2029 renewal' figure sometimes attached to this order is a staff statement in an Executive Officer report, not a provision of the order, which prints no expiry date at all.
Order R9-2024-0001, General Condition B.4, PDF page 24 (printed page 21) · 2024-03-13
No winery mailbox, but a Wine Country project manager is published, the waiver program has its own inbox, and the statewide contacts table routes Region 9 winery questions to a general one. Worth knowing here more than anywhere: Temecula Valley is Region 9, not Region 8, because it drains to the Santa Margarita River.
- Olufisayo Osibodu, Wine Country project managerOlufisayo.Osibodu@waterboards.ca.gov
- General inbox, per the statewide contacts tablerb9_questions@waterboards.ca.gov
- Waiver and WDR program mailboxRB9-WDR@waterboards.ca.gov
- Wine Country project manager(619) 521-8036
DWQ-Winery@waterboards.ca.gov · Covers all nine regions. Worth using where your own board publishes no winery contact, which is five of the nine measured against the State Water Board’s own Winery Order contacts table. Measured against each board’s own website the figure is seven, because Regions 1 and 5 publish winery guidance without a winery mailbox of their own. We use the statewide table, because that is the page a Winery Order filing is routed through.
Existing wineries, except those with individual WDRs, general WDRs, or conditional waivers of WDRs, are required to seek coverage under this General Order by submitting a complete Notice of Intent (NOI) (Attachment B), including the appropriate filing fee (CCR, title 23, section 2200), and a technical report including, but not limited to, the information requested in Attachment C to the regional water board. ... The NOI, technical report, and filing fee must be submitted within 3 years of adoption of this General Order unless otherwise notified of an earlier enrollment date by the regional water board.
This is the sentence that puts you under the Order at all, and everything else on this page hangs off its middle clause. Three years from adoption is January 20, 2024, and that date has passed. A board may notify you of an EARLIER date. Nothing here lets one give you a later one, which is why Napa's 2027 date rests on Region 2 exercising discretion through a county agreement rather than on anything in the Order. And the exception is narrow: individual WDRs, general WDRs, or a conditional waiver. Not a county program, not an informal understanding, not a permit for something else.
Order WQ 2021-0002-DWQ, Finding 57, printed page 24
The State Water Board intends for this General Order to be the primary permitting mechanism for wineries in the state. Dischargers covered by individual WDRs, general WDRs, or a conditional waiver of WDRs may continue discharging under that authority until those orders expire or come up for renewal. At that time, or earlier at the discretion of the regional water board, it is the intent of the State Water Board that regional water boards will enroll all eligible wineries under this General Order. If a regional water board determines that, due to site-specific conditions, coverage under this General Order will not be protective of water quality, the regional water board may issue individual WDRs.
Quoted in full, all four sentences, because the ones either side of the comfortable bit are what get dropped. It opens by saying this Order is intended to be the primary permitting mechanism for wineries in the state. It closes twice over: regional boards will enroll eligible wineries at renewal or earlier at the board's discretion, and a board may move a facility to individual requirements where site-specific conditions make general coverage unprotective. That last power turns on water quality, not on volume or convenience. All of it is State Board language about what a discharger may do while an existing authority lasts. None of it is a commitment by any regional board.
Have existing individual WDRs, waiver, regional general order coverage? Apply now or date determined by region-specific enrollment priority
This is the State Board speaking, so it does not satisfy the question for any individual region. It is here because it is the only statewide guidance on the point, and because it points the opposite way from the comfortable reading of Finding 59. State Water Board winery webinar slides, 2024, page 14
Estimate your tier.
The Order sorts wineries into five categories by annual process water flow. This walks you to the likely one. If you do not know a number, say so. The categories are wide, so an approximate answer usually still lands in the right place.
Annual fee, and the filing fee that accompanies your Notice of Intent is the first year’s annual fee rather than a charge on top.
| 10,000 to 30,000 | $889 |
|---|---|
| over 30,000 to 100,000 | $1,186 |
| over 100,000 to 300,000 | $1,423 |
| over 300,000 to 600,000 | $2,372 |
| over 600,000 to 1,000,000 | $3,558 |
| over 1,000,000 to 3,000,000 | $8,301 |
| over 3,000,000 to 7,000,000 | $15,417 |
| over 7,000,000 to 15,000,000 | $22,532 |
These bands are not the tiers. There are eight of them against the Order’s five categories, and they are set by a different instrument. A Tier 2 winery pays $1,186 or $1,423 depending on which side of 100,000 gal/yr it lands, so knowing your tier does not tell you your fee. The two even draw their boundaries in different styles: the Order’s Table 1 writes its tiers as 30,001 to 300,000, while the fee schedule writes its bands as greater than 30,000. Same idea, and a reader comparing them line by line should not read anything into the difference.
California Code of Regulations, title 23, section 2200(a)(3)(A). FY 2025-26 schedule, page 5. Reductions, and the two cases where this figure is wrong, are in the calculator result.
In Napa County there is a second fee. The County charges its own annual fee, in these same eight bands, on top of the state figures above. Nothing in the Order or the state fee schedule says so. Tick My winery is in Napa County in the estimator below to see both and the total.
These are FY 2025-26 figures and they are close to expiring. The FY 2026-27 schedule is calendared for adoption on 15 September 2026. The Board’s stakeholder handout of 30 July 2026 shows a 3.3% change against the waste discharge requirements program, which is the program wineries sit in: a fee-setting budget of $49.488 million against a revenue forecast of $47.893 million, a gap of $1.595 million. That is a program-level budget figure, not an adopted per-band rate, and final amounts follow the State Budget Act, so we are not printing projected numbers here. The real ones will be here once they are adopted. The 30 July handout, Attachment 2
Annual facility process water design flow, measured before treatment.
| Category | Gallons per year |
|---|---|
| Exempt | Under 10,000 |
| Tier 1 | 10,000 to 30,000 |
| Tier 2 | 30,001 to 300,000 |
| Tier 3 | 300,001 to 1,000,000 |
| Tier 4 | 1,000,001 to 15,000,000 |
Table 1 stops at 15,000,000 gal/yr. The Order describes itself as covering winery process water discharged to land up to that figure, and the table has five rows, not six. What the Order does not say anywhere is what happens above it. The nearest thing is Finding 59, which lets a regional board issue individual requirements where site-specific conditions make general coverage unprotective, and that turns on water quality rather than on volume. So if you are above 15,000,000, ask your board rather than assuming.
Table 1, Order WQ 2021-0002-DWQ, page 9.
Where does your winery process water go?
Do you have metered process water flow?
Everything below rests on how much process water you use per gallon of wine. We assume 5.5 to 1. If you have measured yours, put it in and the estimate becomes your arithmetic rather than ours.
Your production volume never leaves your browser. Nothing you type is recorded. We log which fee band you landed in and a rough ratio range, never your figures. What this site records
5.5 gallons of water per gallon of wine is a typical industry figure and is used if you leave the box empty. It is an assumption, not a threshold, and it is not the same number as the North Coast waiver’s 5:1 wastewater to wine cap.
Fifteen things you cannot discharge.
Before the requirements, the Order sets out what it will not cover. Most of these are obvious. Four or five are not, and they are the ones that catch working wineries.
These are the terms of coverage, not a ban. The Order says “IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that … the Discharger … shall comply with the following”, and it binds someone enrolled under it. So a prohibition here does not make an activity unlawful in California. It means this Order does not cover it.
If one of these describes something you do, you have not broken a law by reading this page. It means that stream needs its own authorisation, or that your facility needs a change before it fits inside this Order. Two of them, the commingled system rules, come with a compliance period rather than an immediate cut-off. If you are already enrolled and one of these is happening, that is a different matter and it is a violation of your own Order.
-
1
Discharge of waste to surface waters or surface water drainage courses is prohibited.
-
2
Discharge of waste classified as “hazardous,” as defined in CCR, title 23, section 2521, or classified as “designated,” as defined in Water Code section 13173, is prohibited.
-
3
Discharge of toxic substances into any waste treatment system or land application area such that biological treatment mechanisms are disrupted is prohibited.
-
4
Discharge of untreated or partially treated waste from treatment system bypass is prohibited.
-
5
Discharge of waste to land not owned, operated, controlled, or contracted by the Discharger is prohibited.
Leased blocks and a neighbor’s land count. If the ground you apply to is not yours or under contract, this Order does not cover that discharge.
-
6
Discharge of waste in a manner or location other than that described in this General Order or the NOA is prohibited.
Your Notice of Applicability describes your facility as you declared it. Change the system materially and the NOA no longer describes what you are doing.
-
7
Discharge of stillage and other distillery waste is prohibited.
If you run a still, that waste stream sits outside this Order. It is not unlawful, it needs its own authorisation. This is the single most missed line in the document.
-
8
Discharge and/or application of process solids to the subsurface disposal area is prohibited.
-
9
Discharge of water softener brine is prohibited.
Most wineries have a softener and almost nobody thinks of the regeneration brine as a waste stream. It cannot go into the process water system.
-
10
Discharge of waste to an unlined pond is prohibited except as otherwise provided in this General Order.
Lined does not mean plastic. Two feet of compacted clay meets the standard, and so do Portland cement concrete, a 40-mil geomembrane, a 60-mil HDPE liner over a prepared base, or an engineered equivalent your board approves. The test is a number, not a material: hydraulic conductivity of 1x10-6 cm/s or less. And the carve-out here is one of the largest in the Order. That standard binds new or expanding ponds at Tiers 2, 3 and 4. Tier 1 and Tier 2 facilities may carry on with existing ponds at their current lined or unlined status, and a new pond at a Tier 1 facility may be unlined outright. What you cannot skip is condition. You report liner material, thickness, age and condition, and a board may pull a pond onto the full liner requirements where it has had, or could have, frequent or significant spills, or could pollute groundwater. A clay liner that was sound twenty years ago is not evidence about today.
-
11
Discharge of waste to spreading basins, permeable basins, or other similar rapid infiltration or high rate land application systems is prohibited except as otherwise provided in this General Order.
-
12
Discharge of domestic wastewater to a process water treatment system, process water pond, LAA, or any surface water is prohibited.
Bathroom and kitchen waste cannot go into the winery system.
-
13
Discharge of process wastewater to a domestic wastewater treatment system (e.g., septic system) is prohibited.
And it cannot go the other way either. Cellar water into the septic tank is prohibited. Older facilities frequently do exactly this.
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14
Discharge of commingled process water and domestic wastewater to an SDS is prohibited, except as stipulated in the Technical Provisions section for addressing an existing commingled system.
An existing commingled system gets a compliance period to separate the streams. A new or expanded one does not. But separating them is not the only way out. Finding 57(f) says a winery that keeps, expands or installs a commingled system is not eligible to maintain coverage of it under this Order beyond that period and “shall obtain a separate permit to regulate the commingled wastewater”. Site-specific waste discharge requirements for that stream are a route, not a failure. And there is a third door. Finding 57(g): if you treat process water and domestic wastewater separately but send both to the same subsurface disposal area, that may be eligible under this Order with regional board approval, on technical justification that the area is sized, designed and operated to receive and treat both. Worth asking before you cost out a second disposal field.
-
15
Discharge of domestic wastewater to the subsurface disposal area is prohibited, except as stipulated in the Subsurface Disposal Specifications section, whereby treated wastewater from separate process water and domestic wastewater systems may be directed to the same subsurface disposal area with regional water board approval.
Not prohibitions, and not a count worth memorising. These sit in the findings rather than in the ordering clause, and they decide whether you can enroll at all. A winery that produces recycled water subject to Title 22, or that commingles wastewater in a way that brings it under the Uniform Water Recycling Criteria, is “not eligible for coverage under this General Order”. A winery that land applies solids containing domestic wastewater solids is “not covered by this General Order” and falls under 40 CFR Part 503 instead. And a winery that keeps, expands or installs a commingled process and domestic system is not eligible to maintain coverage of it beyond the compliance period and “shall obtain a separate permit to regulate the commingled wastewater”.
Order WQ 2021-0002-DWQ, section A, pages 32 and 33, quoted in full. Eligibility language from the findings, page 18. If any of this describes your facility, the useful next step is a conversation with your regional board rather than a decision made from a web page.
What you are actually signing up for.
Enrolling is not the work. This is the work. What follows is the shape of it, not a reproduction of the Order, and your own Notice of Applicability is what finally binds you. The full detail is on the records and reporting page: what you keep, for how long, what you file, when, and who is allowed to sign it.
Tier 1 and Tiers 2, 3 and 4 are given the same four headings: general specifications, process water ponds, land application, subsurface disposal. The difference is depth. In the Order as printed, the Tier 1 version runs about 123 lines. The Tier 2 to 4 version runs about 631.
So a smaller winery is not doing a different kind of compliance. It is doing the same kind, described in a fifth of the detail, with far less prescribed monitoring. That is the single most useful thing to understand before you read either one.
Tier 1 has no numeric effluent limits. Everyone above it has these, and exceeding one triggers a Compliance Letter to the regional board.
| Process water flow | Shall not exceed the permitted process water design flow stated in your NOA. Measured before treatment, and it includes water from outdoor processing areas. |
|---|---|
| BOD to the land application area | Shall not exceed 100 lb/ac/d averaged over any discharge cycle, on a moving average of the three most recent samples. |
| Nitrogen | Application at agronomic rates, demonstrated with an annual nitrogen balance for the plants grown on the area. Crop uptake values have to come from tissue sampling, a named published source, or a value the board approves. |
| Flow to subsurface disposal | Shall not exceed 1 gallon per square foot of trench per day. |
| Treated effluent to subsurface disposal | Total nitrogen 10 mg/L, BOD 300 mg/L, TSS 330 mg/L, on a rolling average of the three most recent samples. |
Under 10,000 gal/yr of process water design flow, the Order says you are exempt, and Finding 13 says plainly: “Exempt facilities are not required to enroll under this General Order.”
Exempt is not unconditional. You still must not discharge to surface water, discharge hazardous or designated waste, discharge untreated or partially treated waste, or discharge to land you do not own or control. You must manage spills, keep waste within your boundaries, minimize nuisance conditions, and treat stormwater that touches winery waste as process water.
And exempt status can be taken away. The Order allows a board to direct an exempt facility to enroll as Tier 1 where it violates those conditions or is otherwise a threat to water quality, “including a large concentration in an area”. That clause is not hypothetical: the San Diego board has used exactly that reasoning for the Temecula wine country groundwater basin, where staff have said all wineries must enroll regardless of volume.
If nobody sent you a letter.
Most of California is not Napa. Fifty six counties run on the statewide Order alone, with no county program and no county deadline. If that is you, nothing has told you to act and there is no date on a letter. This is the path.
The Napa path on this page describes a winery transferring out of an existing county program. It files Sections 7 and 9 only of the Technical Report. If you are enrolling for the first time you file all nine, and Section 3 alone is a substantial piece of work. Reading the Napa steps and concluding you file two sections is the most expensive mistake available on this site, which is why this section exists.
The countdown at the top of this page is Napa’s date. It is not yours. Finding 57 of the Order set the deadline for existing wineries at three years from adoption, which was January 20, 2024. If you were operating before the Order was adopted and you do not hold individual WDRs, general WDRs, or a conditional waiver, that was your date and it has gone.
That is not a reason to panic and it is not a reason to wait. Finding 57 excepts wineries already covered by one of those three instruments, and Finding 59 lets a board set an earlier date, but the Order provides no mechanism for a later one. Napa’s 2027 date exists because Region 2 exercised discretion through a county agreement. Nobody has done that for you unless your board has told you so in writing.
Everything on this page is our reading of the Order. These are the State Water Board’s, and where the two ever disagree, theirs is the one to follow.
- The Winery Order Eligibility Survey Their official test of whether the Order applies to you at all. Our calculator estimates your tier and says plainly that it is an estimate; this is the answer you can cite. Linked from their Winery Order page, with a help guide beside it.
- The Compliance Calendar tool A spreadsheet the Board publishes for tracking your reporting dates. Worth having given that Attachment G gives two different Annual Report due dates on the same page. Its narrative at G-18 says April 1, with a worked example. Table G-1, directly below, says Mar 1. And a third date, June 1 in Attachment E, is not yours at all: that is the local agency’s report under Water Code section 13225(c).
- The rest of the Board’s winery page Also there: the Notice of Intent help guide, pond lining guidance, flow measurement and BOD calculation guidance, a fee payment guide, and the GeoTracker electronic submittal guide. We link the page rather than each file so the link keeps working when they reorganize.
- 1Work out whether you are in at all
This Order covers winery process water discharged to land, up to 15 million gal/yr. If your process water goes to a municipal sewer or is hauled off site, this is not your permit. Above 15 million gal/yr the General Order does not apply and the regional board issues individual requirements instead. Under 10,000 gal/yr you are exempt and not required to enroll.
- 2Submit an eNOI through CIWQS
The electronic Notice of Intent is the enrollment itself. There is no account and no login. The form opens on a valid email address, and the link below is the one the State Water Board’s own Winery Order page gives for filing it. Write down the Form ID it issues you: that plus the same email address is the only way back into a half finished application, because there is no account holding it for you.
- 3Attach a Technical Report, all nine sections
It attaches to the eNOI rather than being a separate submission. Page 42 of the eNOI guide is where it is asked for.
1 Facility backgroundOwnership, location, maps, parcel numbers, CEQA status. 2 Facility tier and winery effluent flowYour tier and the design flow the whole permit is built on. 3 Process water generation, treatment, reuse, and disposalThe heaviest one. Collection and treatment, a chemical inventory with quantities, a process flow diagram, pond system details, solids, subsurface disposal. 4 Water qualitySource water and process water characterisation. 5 Solids managementHow process solids are handled and where they go. 6 Groundwater characterisationDepth, gradient, existing monitoring if any. 7 Facility improvements and proposed scheduleWhat does not yet comply and when you will fix it. This is the one Napa transfers file. 8 Summary informationThe pull-together. 9 CertificationSigned by the right person. The signatory rules are where streamlined filings go wrong. The two highlighted rows are the only ones a Napa transfer files. Everyone else files all nine.
- 4Pay the filing fee
The filing fee that accompanies the Notice of Intent is the first year’s annual fee. It is not an extra charge on top, and it is set by your flow band rather than by your tier.
- 5Wait for the Notice of Applicability, then read it carefully
The NOA is what actually binds you. It states your permitted process water design flow, your tier, and your compliance schedule. Once issued, your NOI and technical report are incorporated into the Order by reference, so what you wrote in them becomes enforceable. Discharging in a manner or location other than what the NOA describes is one of the fifteen prohibitions above.
- 6Ask your regional board rather than guessing
Which board holds you follows the watershed you drain to, not the county line. Four of the nine have published no winery guidance at all, and five publish no winery contact, so the phone is often the only route.
Find your regional board → · DWQ-Winery@waterboards.ca.gov, the State Water Board’s winery inbox, which covers all nine regions
The regulatory feed
Actions, deadlines and guidance affecting California winery process water, with the citation attached and an honest note wherever the record does not agree with itself.
Be told when this changes.
We send when something actually changes: an order adopted, a deadline moved, a board saying something it has not said before. Not on a schedule, and not when there is nothing to report.
- No account, no payment, no catch. The whole site stays open.
- One click to stop, in every message.
- Your address is used for these alerts and nothing else. We do not sell it, share it, or move it onto any client list.
The conflict ledger
Every place this site has found two sources that both look authoritative and say different things. Each carries a permanent number, the date it was first recorded here, the document and page on each side, and a link of its own you can send to a board, a lender or a consultant. Nothing here is settled by us guessing. When one is settled, the entry says how and when, and stays on this page rather than disappearing.
That test is narrow on purpose, and we hold our own entries to it. Three of these did not meet it on a careful reading, so they sit in a second list further down as open questions, keeping their numbers and their links, each saying in one line why it is there. A conflict number is only worth sending to somebody if it means one thing.
Recorded, but not conflicts
These are real and they keep their numbers, their dates and their links, because some of them have already been sent to people. They are here rather than above because they do not meet the test this ledger sets itself: two sources that both look authoritative and say different things. One rests on a document nobody here has read yet. One has two sources that do not actually disagree, because the second is silent rather than contrary. One is a trade bulletin corrected by an adopted order. Each row says which. Splitting them out was an outside reviewer’s suggestion and it was a fair one: a conflict number is only worth citing if it means one thing.
On the dates. First recorded is the date this site first published the conflict. It is not the date the disagreement arose, which is usually not knowable. Entries marked reconstructed predate this ledger, and are dated from the site’s own change log rather than from a record kept at the time. Everything filed from 30 August 2026 onward is dated as it is filed.
Starting points, not finished reports
Blank templates for the documents the Winery Order asks you to produce, and plain summaries of the ones no template can honestly cover. The Order's own deadlines are filled in and every judgment is left to you. Free, no sign up. They are general, they describe no particular facility, and they are not a substitute for reading the order that applies to yours.
More will be added here as they are written. If there is a document you keep having to build from scratch, say so and it may become the next one.
We do this work for a living.
BCG Notify is written by Ashley Boudet, Principal Consultant at BCG Water LLC, a water and wastewater compliance consultancy in Napa. The reading here is free and stays free. What we do beyond it is look at your own file and tell you where you actually stand.
A page cannot tell you what your file says.
Everything above is the general shape of the rule. What actually determines your position is your permit of record, your reported volumes, and whether anything at your facility has changed since it was issued. That is a document review, and it is the part worth getting right before a deadline rather than after one.
The link opens a short prefilled message. The more of it you fill in, the more useful the first reply will be.
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