Yet the decision from Southern Water to add the green roof to the facility, an additional cost totaling hundreds of thousands of pounds, came from a rocky planning battle in the past and severe opposition from the local community in Peacehaven.
After an initial planning application for the plant to be located at an existing site was unsuccessful, Peacehaven was selected from a shortlist of eight sites. The WWTP was only then accepted after a design overhaul; changing the previous curved, metal profile clad structure (deemed "alien to the environment") to a sleeker, grass roof design. Even the valley where the facility is situated had to be "deepened and steepened" so the facility would have a lower profile.
Despite the new design, which was approved in 2008, local opposition still claimed that the smell and increased traffic from the development could "damage the community". Delaying the project further, it was in 2009 when a High Court rejected the protesters' application for a judicial review of the planning approval. The contract was then signed, allowing construction to commence in July 2009.
Speaking to Water & Wastewater International, Ben Green, programme manager at Southern Water, says: "Some people would still prefer that the WWTP wasn't there in the first place, but the end result in terms of aesthetics have gone a long way to help build bridges with the local community."
So, will other water utilities swallow the cost of green roofs if it means wastewater treatment plants fit in better with neighbouring, sensitive communities?
"We live on a crowded island and have a very tough planning process," Green says. "In terms of development and the expansion of our towns and cities, inevitably we'll end up encroaching on what were once rural or semi-rural treatment works."
The programme manager adds: "There will be other instances across the UK where innovative or more advanced, more aesthetically pleasing designs will be both demanded by the public and required through the planning process, as effectively people and wastewater treatment plants get closer together." WWi
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