Could a giant, vertical, fake grass covering be the way to make the incinerator look nicer?

Thursday 28 May 2015

TTS have come up with a list of ways to stop the incinerator ruining the St Helier skyline – and among them is to stick a massive strip of astroturf on one side.

Another plan is to stick a huge printed vinyl wrap on the side of the building – puzzlingly they have used a picture of former Holland midfielder Edgar Davids as an example.

But in a leaked document TTS say that there are potential problems with all the proposed solutions that they have come up with, and that the best thing to do would be to just let the existing trees grow – but they say “they will never screen the building."

 St Helier Constable Simon Crowcroft said that TTS should be taking the issue more seriously because there was an obligation on the department to try to hide the building from residents, so it wouldn’t be such an eyesore.

He said: “Having argued against the site of it all the way through the process, I’m afraid that it looks as bad as I thought it would.

“All that we can do as a group is to continue to press TTS and Planning to explore solutions. I would not want to rule out some vegetation which would be resilient, but they really should have thought of this before they put an incinerator next to our protected Ramsar site on our beautiful coastline.”

Here are the options considered by TTS, and the problems that they found with each of them:

• Plant bigger trees – the problems: we’d need 100 of them, they’d probably die, and someone would have to water them.
• Plant climbers on the side of the incinerator – the problems: they couldn’t grow them from the ground, they’d never get high enough to be visible, and all they’d do is turn the building green.
• Install green walls – the problems: they’re expensive, they’d have to be weeded, they wouldn’t grow, and all they’d do is turn the building green.
• Paint the building – the problems: the paint wouldn’t last, someone would have to repaint it, and it would still look basically the same.
• Artificial grass – the problem: it would just turn the building green.
• A vinyl wrap – the problems: no-one knows if it would work yet, it would have to be replaced, and the building would look basically the same.
• Printed wrap on a frame – the problems: it might fall down, and the building would look basically the same.