HWT Water Treatment designed and constructed a winery effluent treatment plant at Rickety Bridge Wine Estate in Franschhoek, South Africa.
The system was engineered to treat high-strength winery wastewater together with domestic sewage generated by the estate facilities. The plant provides reliable COD reduction, pH correction, nitrification-denitrification, solids removal, and disinfection to ensure stable compliance under seasonal harvest conditions.
Treatment Process
The Rickety Bridge plant incorporates:
- Solids separation
- pH correction
- Biological COD reduction
- Aerobic and anoxic treatment zones
- Nitrification and denitrification
- Final disinfection using sodium hypochlorite
- IPW and DWS compliance
The underground bioreactor configuration allows the treatment infrastructure to remain visually unobtrusive while maintaining high treatment efficiency.
The estate is named “Rickety Bridge” because of the original wooden railway-sleeper bridge that once crossed the Franschhoek River to access the farm.
Although that bridge was replaced in 1996 for safety, the name lives on.
The land that now makes up Rickety Bridge was granted in 1797 to Paulina de Villiers — making her one of the first female land-owners in South Africa
When the French Protestant refugees (the Huguenots) were granted farms in what is now Franschhoek in 1694, they settled in a valley that was previously known by its Dutch name **Olifantshoek** (“Elephant Corner”)
because it was once a seasonal breeding ground for wild elephants.
So — not only did these early French-farmers bring wine-making and their culture to the Cape,
but they also took up land where elephants once roamed!
Construction phase – underground bioreactors now completely out of sight