Sediments produced from dredging are categorized as waste. The management of these materials is a worldwide problem. In the context of sustainable development, the traditional solutions such as, immersion, suspension and storage are controlled by national and international regulations. Simultaneously, there is a shortage of aggregates from quarries. It is for these reasons that the environmentalists are encouraged to increase the economically and ecologically responsible re-use of sediments. The aim of this work is to assess the applicability of dredged river sediments in road construction. After dredging the sediment contains a high amount of water. In order to obtain a rapid dewatering, the addition of an optimum dose of a flocculation aid has been proposed. The first part of this paper looks to evaluate the physical, geotechnical and environmental properties of the raw sediment and dehydrated sediment through addition of a flocculation aid. The second part focuses on the treatment of these materials by incorporating a hydraulic binder/lime and a granular corrector, in order to improve the mechanical properties of these sediments for use in sub-base construction and to evaluate the effect of these treatments on the dehydrated sediment. The obtained results show that the dehydrated sediment has no appreciable effect for valorization of river sediments and can be used in sub-base layer of the road construction. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.