Water management authorities in the 2 Seas area are responsible for maintaining a network of waterways. Keeping these waterways free from accumulating sediments is one of the key tasks in waterway management. Specifically, in urbanised deltas and densely populated river basins, this is crucial to reduce the risk of flooding. Good maintenance is also needed to keep waterways navigable – a condition for clean, low-carbon, water-based transport. A large part of the sediment is dumped as waste, in particular if it contains pollution. This process involves transporting large volumes of waste material over long distances – with resulting CO2 emissions – and takes up scare space for landfill.

The USAR project aimed to introduce a more resource-efficient approach to sediment management, by focussing on the potential to apply sediments as a resource to replace primary resources or make new materials. Some promising applications are already available, namely in construction materials and works - and many more can be developed. USAR sought to identify potential uses for sediment, demonstrate and test new methods and develop the business models and tools that water managers need to apply this circular approach in their daily practice.

USAR project’s outputs include :

● An Inventory catalogue of possible uses of sediment as a resource and conditions, potential, limitations for use
● Recycling strategies for partner territories based on local potential for uses of sediment
● A Pilot on the use of marine dredged sediment in coastal saltmarshes as coastal defence“Operational Sediment Management System” – ICT tool for water managers to make business cases and management decisions for recycling of sediment.

Check the “Outputs” section below to download related material and see “Main Achievements” section for further information about the achieved results.

The cross-border approach within the project had been established since the beginning. In fact, partner territories represent all main sediment types: polluted/non-polluted, high organic, low organic/sandy and salty. This allowed them to test and validate new use in all possible conditions.

Experts from all partners jointly designed and followed-up pilot tests, which improved quality and robustness of these new applications beyond what individual partners could achieve.
Additionally, working with partners from different territorial, policy and legal backgrounds ensured that all outputs are validated for application in all the countries of the 2 Seas area.

The project introduced technologies, methods, and tools for the use of dredging sediments as a resource into the practice of water managers by identifying, analysing and testing potential applications that make use of dredging sediments and by developing sediment management tools to enable water managers to organise this circular approach to sediment management.

This resulted in concrete changes. First, the adoption of new resource efficient technologies, methods, tools for using sediment as a resource. Second, A reduction in the volume of sediment treated as waste and of operational costs of water managers.