S.A. man's petition helped end popular sky lantern festival on South Padre Island

Sky lantern releases have garnered plenty of popularity in the United States the last few years.

But one San Antonio man is on a mission to ban them for good. And last week he saw some success.

Mario Giacalone created a petition in December to put an end to Lantern Fest on South Padre Island. Last week, after hearing from Giacalone and other groups, the City of SPI voted 5 to 1 to deny the event's permit.

Lantern Fest would have celebrated its second year in September. Giacalone said the two-day event was expected to draw in a crowd of 3,000 to 4,000 people.

While he's the first to admit Lantern Fest and other events like it make for an "amazing, gorgeous sight," Giacalone also told mySA.com the lanterns, especially when they are released by the thousands, are environmentally destructive.

"But people don't realize that when those things land, it's not a gorgeous site. They are pretty, but that five to 10 minutes of beauty is not worth the amount of damage," he said.

"Basically people are lighting fires on balloons and letting them loose to fly away," Giacalone said. "A little fact on those balloons is they are designed to burn for 5 to 10 minutes. They can get altitudes up to 1,200 feet and have been known to fly to up to 5 miles away."

Giacalone said these ceremonies have led to dead livestock, injured children, wildfires, damage to sea life and more. The devices themselves are made from bamboo rigs, nylon material and chemically treated rice paper.

After a 8-week experiment, the Shoreline Department
of South Padre Island found that sky lanterns materials do not biodegrade.

In the weeks leading up to the vote, an 8-week experiment was performed to determine the bio-degradation rates of sky lanterns in the Laguna Madre. The Shoreline Department of SPI found that a fully burnt lantern will take seven weeks to reduce to the bamboo ring and weathered string.

"If it doesn't burn out and it hits the ground, which they do by the hundreds, now you have this liquid device soaked in a flammable material," Giacalone said, adding, or if they don't burn out, they can go into the water and pollute the ocean.

Even after South Padre Island banned the festival, Giacalone continues to work on spreading the word on sky lantern dangers. He is trying to reach other areas near San Antonio where these events take place.

"They are trying to hold one outside of Bastrop which hasn't recouped yet from the major fire that almost burned the city down five years ago," he said.

Giacalone said that if Texas adopted the international fire code, then sky lanterns would be banned statewide; however, even if adopted, the state could choose to not apply it in full.

In the meantime, this San Antonian is taking matters into his own hands.

"My goal is to make citizens aware of the dangers of what these things can do, get the state involved and pass an ordinance to ban these devices," Giacalone said. "I'm not done."

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