Butte-Silver Bow runs on surface water, and local glass collects the Mountain West spring pollen wave and wildfire smoke residue in fire season.
Butte's water comes off the mountains from Basin Creek, the Big Hole River and Moulton Reservoir, and its report publishes no hardness figure. Copper wrote the rest of the city: the uptown landmark district is full of 1890s buildings on steep ground, where a building's uphill and downhill faces are different jobs at different prices. Summer is short, July and August are the working months, wildfire smoke can film the glass in fire season, and a single-story exterior runs $180 to $320.
Butte's hardness has not been sourced to the operator, and its supply is cold mountain water, meaning it is expected to leave modest residue compared with valley-aquifer cities.
Figures by plant, as reported.
| Hardness | not published Butte-Silver Bow publishes no hardness figure in its 2025 Water Quality Report. |
|---|---|
| Disinfectant | free chlorine |
| Source and treatment | Surface water, per the EPA SDWIS federal record · Pre pH adjustment, coagulation, flocculation, sedimentation and rapid sand filtration, post-chlorination and an orthophosphate inhibitor · No softening step. |
Not in the report: pH, alkalinity, corrosion index, iron, manganese, sodium, chloride and total dissolved solids.
SOURCE · Butte-Silver Bow 2025 Water Quality Report, with the EPA SDWIS federal treatment record · How we source these numbers
Butte's timing question is wind off disturbed mine-waste ground, not a pollen calendar.
MONTANA SEASON BY SEASON →Butte's water comes off the mountains — Basin Creek, the Big Hole River and Moulton Reservoir between them — and Basin Creek was clean enough that the city ran it unfiltered until regulation required a plant. Everything else about this city is written by copper: a National Historic Landmark uptown of 1890s buildings, contaminated ground, and a flooded open pit on the edge of the business district.
The consolidated city-county draws from mountain sources rather than a valley aquifer: Basin Creek, the Big Hole River and the Moulton Reservoir, each with its own plant. Cold, low-mineral mountain supply is the normal condition here.
Basin Creek ran without filtration for decades because its turbidity was low enough not to need it. The $26 million Basin Creek treatment facility that now handles it was paid for through the Natural Resource Damage Program rather than by local ratepayers, and it serves roughly 10,000 people in the Butte Flats area.
Uptown Butte is one of the largest historic districts in the country, built in the copper boom between the 1880s and the 1910s. The glazing that comes with that is old, thin, irregular and usually still in its original putty, and it cannot be razored or soaked.
The city is a Superfund landscape, and the practical consequence for a cleaner is dust. Historic smelter and mine-waste soils carry arsenic and lead, so disturbed ground upwind of a job is a genuine exposure question, not just a dirty-glass question.
The Berkeley Pit sits immediately against the uptown district — a flooded open-pit mine holding acidic, metal-laden water. Wind off that ground is the local reason to rinse tools and not leave buckets open on a job site.
Elevation near a mile and a half means thin air, hard ultraviolet and cold nights well into spring. Insulated-unit seals fail early here, and washing water can freeze on the glass in months that would be safe at lower altitude.
The city is built on a hillside and the older streets climb it steeply, so a building's uphill and downhill faces present completely different drops. Two storeys at the front can be four at the back, and that decides the price.
Walkerville sits above the main city on the same hill and is older and tighter still, with almost no setback and original mining-era sash on most of its housing stock.
The hillside decides it in Butte — a building's uphill and downhill faces are different jobs at different prices.
Uptown's 1890s glazing is heritage work, and Superfund soils make dust exposure a real reason to hire someone insured for it.
OPEN COST ESTIMATOR →2025 annual mean at the Butte Greeley School monitor, Alley Btwn N. Park Pl. and S. Park Pl., 17 km north-east of the city (EPA site 30-093-0005).
Largest air release: REC Silicon, 119140 Rick Jones WAY (primary metals), inside the city limits, 2,790 lb in 2024.
In Butte-Silver Bow, waste of water is prohibited: leaky fixtures must be repaired at once without waiting for notice, taps kept closed when not in use, and service can be shut off once five days' notice has run out.
Butte-Silver Bow Code §13.20.440: waste of water prohibited, notice, shut-off · checked September 2026
Butte-Silver Bow forbids discharging into its municipal storm water system or any watercourse materials other than storm water, pollutants included, that cause or contribute to a water quality violation.
Butte-Silver Bow Code §13.32.310: discharge prohibitions · checked September 2026
Butte-Silver Bow's design review certificate of appropriateness program covers local register properties, city-county owned historic properties and historic properties receiving local public incentives, infill in a historic district included.
Butte-Silver Bow Code §2.64.110: design review certificate of appropriateness program · checked September 2026
Wildfire-smoke residue heavy in active fire seasons. The 2017, 2018, 2021, and 2024 fire seasons each produced extended residue exposure on residential and commercial statewide. Operators serving statewide residential carry wildfire-smoke residue handling as part of the routine fire-season operating practice.
Butte's hardness has not been sourced to the operator, and its supply is cold mountain water, meaning it is expected to leave modest residue compared with valley-aquifer cities.
Residential window cleaning in Butte typically runs $6–10 per pane or $180–320 for a standard single-story exterior. The hillside decides it in Butte — a building's uphill and downhill faces are different jobs at different prices.
Butte's drier, frost-free months are July and August, by NOAA's 1991–2020 normals for the Butte Bert Mooney Airport station, where June brings the most rain. The calendar on this page marks July (after the June 8 bloom and after smoke season). Frost nights usually run from September 5 to June 13.
Butte-Silver Bow publishes neither hardness nor dissolved solids, so rinse one pane and let it dry in sun; a white ring means switch to pure water. Treatment starts with pre pH adjustment, coagulation, flocculation and sedimentation.
In Butte the dominant residue patterns include mountain west pollen wave and wildfire smoke residue. Butte's timing question is wind off disturbed mine-waste ground, not a pollen calendar.
Uptown's 1890s glazing is heritage work, and Superfund soils make dust exposure a real reason to hire someone insured for it.
Just over the Montana line