(Wine-Searcher) - The committee set up to limit growth in the valley has made some recommendations.

Napa County has come up with a few suggestions for curbing the wine-industry growth that has caused some residents to label it an "adult Disneyland." None involve tearing down existing castles, but they are intended to prevent new Prince Charmings from joining the club.

The county that passed America's first agricultural preservation ordinance in 1968 has struggled ever since to prevent wealthy people with good lawyers from exploiting loopholes to build their own dream house and winery. In March, the county board of supervisors appointed a special Agricultural Protection Advisory Committee (APAC) to come up with recommendations.Last week it appeared the whole summer's effort was going to collapse when the powerful Napa Valley Vintners organization withdrew its support for the plan then on the drawing board.

So it's an upset that on Monday, APAC accomplished as much as it did. Having learned that NVV's one vote was powerful enough to shoot down the other 16 committee members, the committee concentrated on making recommendations the vintners could live with, and managed to come up with several.

Of primary importance to NVV is that any new laws would apply only to new wineries, not existing ones. So those princes of Napa who have already received dozens of variances – exceptions to the law – are grandfathered in.

But from now on, if the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors pass APAC's recommendations, building a new winery should be much more difficult in Napa County.

The most significant new rule would be that new wineries can develop only 20 percent of the land on their parcel for any type of building, including homes and wineries. So building a castle will require a pretty big moat of vineyards.

Water issues are of particular concern to locals in this third year of a California drought, and APAC proposes that new wineries have specific plans to treat their own wastewater without being allowed to haul it away to a treatment plant next to the Bay Bridge, as many now do. While this is not written as a strict limit on water use in the winery, it will require wineries to use only as much water as they can process, and the process – which involves treatment by micro-organisms that eat sugars and leftover tartaric acid – doesn't happen overnight.