Construction of Route 25 east of Wareham, however, was delayed for nearly three decades to property disputes, environmental concerns and resistance from business owners in Buzzards Bay village, who claimed the freeway would divert all the traffic, and their business, elsewhere, leaving a ghost town in its wake. The proposed alignment ran through land where much of the state's cranberry harvest was located, and this led to lengthy lawsuits and delays. In particular, farmers were concerned that salt runoff from winter ice removal would harm cranberry harvests. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the MassDPW developed several proposals to control storm water runoff and avoid potential damage to the cranberry crops. Engineers for the department developed four different drainage systems to be used along the length of the freeway that would divert runoff away from the Wareham River basin. In addition, the freeway was planned with a thicker asphalt pavement that was largely impervious to water.