A brand new section of Thames river wall designed to promote biodiversity is now fully visible in east London for the first time.

Tideway, the company building the super sewer project in London, has extended King Edward Memorial Park in Wapping into the Thames as part of its work to clean up the river.

And as part of that extension, the new river wall features an irregular shelving pattern designed to retain moisture in order to benefit a range of wildlife, ranging from crabs to algae.

For many years, the site had been home to a temporary ‘cofferdam’ – a large enclosure built out into the Thames to allow the team to conduct its work in a dry environment.

With the work on the river wall inside the cofferdam largely complete, the cofferdam has now been fully removed.

With the cofferdam now gone, the precast concrete panels are now visible for the first time, allowing river users to see their ‘boxy’ design.

Tideway’s work at King Edward Memorial Park was required to intercept the North East Storm Relief Sewer, which typically discharged hundreds of thousands of tonnes of storm sewage into the river in a typical year.

Tideway is intercepting around 20 sewer overflow points up and down the River Thames, in order to divert flows into the new super sewer – a 25km-long tunnel beneath the Thames.

The tunnel has been in operation, and protecting the River Thames since the autumn, and will be fully operational next year.

The eastern section of the Tideway project is being delivered by a joint venture of Costain Ltd., Vinci Construction Grands Projets and Bachy Soletanche.

Works to remove the cofferdam were undertaken by Land & Water.

Image taken in 2023 shows the irregular pattern
designed to promote biodiversity on the river wall.