The Annaquatucket rises on the north side of Pork Hill in North Kingstown, near Hatchery Road. The river flows north to RI-4, then turns south and flows into Belleville Pond. South of the pond, the river continues in a southeasterly direction to its mouth at Narragansett Bay.

The Annaquatucket System, which includes the ponds known as Kettlehole, Belleville, Secret Lake, Lafayette Millpond, Annaquatucket Reservoir, and Hamilton Millpond as well as the dams at Secret Lake, Lafayette, and Hamilton, collects water from the western portion of our town and eventually feeds into the Narragansett Bay at Bissells Cove.  Its overall water quality is also good but has been impacted by development to a degree. The waters of the Annaquatucket support the state fish hatchery on Hatchery Road and also include a regular Alewife population, which although it was once the largest in the region, is now recovering slowly. This river system’s most important contribution to the aquatic biota of the entire northeast is its unique position as the birthplace and childhood home of a great portion of the American eel population. The Annaquatucket is critical to overall eel life cycles in the region and as such has been studied extensively. As a place full of juvenile eels and alewives, along with other fish species like perch, pickerel, trout, and catfish, along with invertebrates like freshwater crayfish, the Annaquatucket, also with a great portion of the watershed protected from development, is home to not only aerial predators like ospreys, but also one of the most successful and plentiful populations of river otters around.