Tires, tinsel and cigarette butts: Cleaning up Satsop River boat launches

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, September 9, 2025

Two popular Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife boat launches on the Satsop River are now tidier thanks to volunteers who spent their Sunday afternoon picking up the trash left behind by visitors.

On Aug. 24 and Sept. 7, the Grays Harbor Stream Team hosted two-hour cleanup events at the west fork of the Satsop River boat launch and the Double Bridges Satsop Boat launch.

During these two hours, volunteers filled black garbage bags with cigarette butts, water and soda bottles, and hauled out pieces of carpet and metal. At the Double Bridges boat launch, two tires that were visible in the underbrush alongside the trail led to discovering four more tires further down the bank.

The Grays Harbor Stream Team is a program of the Grays Harbor Conservation District. Breana Downs, the stream team coordinator, shared that the focus of these events was to help the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife clean up the boat launches on the Satsop River during the summer when they are most heavily used. Grant funding for these events was provided by the Rose Foundation, and the focus was specifically on the Satsop River.

“We’re hoping to write trash pickup into future grants, so we can host more trash cleanup,” said Downs. “I’d love to be able to do other boat launches of theirs because I know that they have some very busy ones that aren’t on the Satsop.”