THE first major freight traffic to use the River Severn for more than 10 years will take to the waterways next week.

Barges will start plying the River Severn between two quarries near Upton-upon-Severn on Monday, each boat carrying the equivalent of 10 lorryloads of material.

RMC Western Aggregates has built two new wharves on the eastern bank of the river, with the help of a £1m grant from the Department of Transport, so gravel extracted from their Ripple-Uckinghall site can be taken by barge to Ryall for processing.

Around 200,000 tonnes of sand and gravel will be carried by barge each year, initially being taken away by road from Ryall.

"The barges only arrived last week and we expect to start commissioning them on February 21," said regional development manager Tony Rowley, of RMC Western Aggregates.

"We still have to do some dredging in the river at Ripple to make it more accessible."

The commissioning of the barges will be a mixed blessing for the residents of Ripple and Ryall.

During construction, there were complaints about lorries using a winding road through the centre of Ripple instead of the approved route along School Lane.

"Now that the wharves are finished, we hope that we have seen the end of construction traffic," said Ripple parish councillor Paul Fearnside.

But another councillor, Roger Sutton said the new workings would mean an increase in lorries leaving Ryall for the A38.

"The Ryall site was more or less worked out some years ago and the number of lorries had reduced dramatically," he said.

"Now every barge load coming up from Ripple is potentially 10 lorry loads coming out of Ryall."

Mr Rowley said from June or July some of the aggregate would go by river to a concrete plant beside the canal at Gloucester.

"Ultimately we would like to do the same at Worcester as part of the redevelopment of Diglis, bringing material by river to a new concrete plant there," he said.