Dredging video transcript

Hi I'm Richard from the ODA, I'm the Environment Manager, and we're here at Bow Locks today. We're undertaking some dredging work on the River Lea, and what we're doing is cleaning and dredging the waterways from here, all the way up to the Olympic Park.

So these waterways have been neglected for many years, and what we're finding is that it's been a dumping ground for cars, shopping trollies, for motor bikes and for bikes and wheels, and part of the process is to pull that material out of the waterways and really clean these waterways up. We're here at Prescott Lock, which is on Three Mills Island, and this lock has been constructed to enable us to move materials by 350 tonne barges from the Thames up to the Olympic Park. We've been trialling successfully 100 tonne barges over the past two months, and this is all part of our programme to move materials by sustainable modes of transport - to get materials off the road and onto rail and water.

This is part of the programme to regenerate the waterways within the Olympic Park. It's creating a more functional environment around the water side. So what we're looking to try and do is plant up the river environment, to create new habitats for wildlife, and we're also looking to put in new tow paths on the rivers and canals that will encourage the community to use the waterways and to see the waterways, both in the Games, but more importantly after the Games.