Friends of Hyalite Partners with Yellowstone Pavement Solutions to Clean Hyalite!
The Stream Machine
Sweeping Saves Our Streams. That’s the motto for Yellowstone Pavement Solutions’ street sweeping initiative. Using a street sweeper painted like a Yellowstone cutthroat trout (the Stream Machine), Yellowstone Pavement Solutions is working to reduce the amount of sediment and pollution entering our local streams so that these waterways stay clean and healthy. Clean streams are good for fish and, well, pretty much everything. You won’t find many critters, plants, or people who prefer their water polluted.
The Hyalite and Bozeman Creek watersheds provide 80% of Bozeman’s municipal water supply, and the cleaner the water is when it comes out of Hyalite, the less it takes to treat it for human consumption, saving Bozeman – and Bozeman taxpayers – money. Keeping Hyalite – and the water flowing out of it – clean is a big part of our stewardship efforts. If you’ve been to Hyalite you’ve probably noticed that the Day Use Area parking lot is pretty close to the reservoir. In fact, in early summer the reservoir often floods part of the parking lot! A major focus of our annual Spring Clean Up Day is to clean up this parking lot before the water rises, so that the pallet fire debris, dog poop bags and other litter that has accumulated over the winter doesn’t end up in Bozeman’s water supply. This year, however, we had to cancel our Spring Clean Up Day because of the COVID-19 pandemic. So, you can imagine how excited we were when Yellowstone Pavement Solutions contacted Friends of Hyalite to ask if we’d be interested in a parking lot sweep!
On May 15 – the day before Hyalite opened for summer vehicle traffic – the Forest Service let the Yellowstone Pavement Solutions Stream Machine through the gate and the street sweepers got to work. The Stream Machine swept the Day Use Area parking lot, cleaning up countless bits of trash, dog poop and other pollutants, leaving it as clean as it’s ever been.
The next day, hundreds of people drove up the Hyalite Road to picnic, paddle and play, kicking off another summer in Hyalite. The Friends of Hyalite board was there too – although we weren’t able to host a Clean Up Day this spring, our board gathered for some socially-distant litter picking. Armed with garbage bags, shovels, and our trusty rolling magnets, we cleaned up the Moser, Lick Creek, History Rock and Blackmore trailheads, along with Langhor Campground and the parts of the Day Use Area that are beyond the parking lot. There’s still plenty of work to be done and we’ll be hosting a number of work parties this summer – in small groups, with social distancing.
Partnerships like the one between Friends of Hyalite and Yellowstone Pavement Solutions are vital to keeping Hyalite clean, but you can help out too! When you visit Hyalite, consider bringing a trash bag to pick up, and pack out, any litter you come across, whether at a trailhead or in the backcountry. If we all leave Hyalite a little bit cleaner than we found it, it will help to protect this special place.
