MATTAPOISETT — Anchorage Way is a short and quiet residential street near Mattapoisett Neck Road. But inconspicuously, for nearly 50 years an extension of the road has degraded the wetland surrounding it.

Namely, the street, shrouded by a sea of green, in fact stretches into forested wetlands. By doing so, the paved path interrupts the flow of water in the area. 

The asphalt strip conveys fresh and brackish water “immediately and quickly” into a salt marsh, damaging it, Mattapoisett Land Trust President Mike Huguenin said.

The path was constructed sometime around 1970, according to Huguenin.

Mattapoisett Land Trust is in the early stages of pursuing a plan to take the road out.

“By doing that, we’ll restore the ecological health of the area,” Huguenin said.

Due to the altered flow, the edge of the salt marsh contains a large stand of phragmites, an invasive plant that feeds on brackish water.

Healthy, wet woods usually don’t have phragmites in them, Huguenin said, and the plant isn’t particularly beneficial either.

Huguenin presented the proposed project to restore the wetland off Anchorage Way to the Mattapoisett Select Board on Tuesday, June 25. Through the town, Mattapoisett Land Trust will apply for a grant from the Buzzards Bay National Estuary Project.

“The idea is that we can probably put this back the way it was,” Huguenin said.

If accepted, the grant would award somewhere between $60,000 to $90,000 to fund a conceptual plan and permitting phase of the project. 

Mattapoisett Land Trust will hear back about the grant during the fall, according to Huguenin.

There are a number of grant opportunities for freshwater restoration, so if the application to the Buzzards Bay National Estuary Project fails, Mattapoisett Land Trust will keep trying, Huguenin said.

“My intention is we’ll keep going on this until we find the money we need for it,” he said.

Construction of the project later on would require another grant for funding. The construction phase would likely entail taking up the pavement and road base, putting natural soils back into the site and reshaping the land to look like it did prior to the insertion of the asphalt road, according to Huguenin.

That would convey the natural groundwater and surface water to the south rather than into the salt marsh, get rid of phragmites in the salt marsh area and create “a much nicer end of Anchorage Way,” Huguenin said.