Some of the floating lanterns scooped up from the Deschutes River by Loot the Deschutes after a water lantern festival did not go as planned last week. 

Bend’s first Water Lantern Festival will probably be its last after event organizers failed to clean up the floating lanterns, which were found at the bottom of the Deschutes River.

The mess caused by the event Aug. 11 outraged community members, coming only weeks after the annual Deschutes River Cleanup. Bend Park & Recreation District, the permitting agency for the event, held at Riverbed Park, decided to ban the event on Tuesday after several of the lanterns were recovered from the river by local volunteers.

“This is due to the issues that arose with containing the lanterns during the event, as well as the lack of communication, lack of remorse and lack of clean-up efforts,” park district spokesperson Julie Brown told The Bulletin on Tuesday. “The inaction doesn’t align with our community’s values.”

The Bulletin reached out to water lantern festival planners for comment, but did not hear back by press time on Tuesday.

A water lantern is a type of floating lamp originating in Asia and is traditionally used in ceremonies like the Japanese Obon Festival, where the lamps are used to guide the souls of the dead to the spirit world. In Asia, the lamps are typically made of paper. The lamps used in Bend contained batteries and LED lights, according to city of Bend officials.

In an Instagram post, Loot the Deschutes, a group of local enthusiasts dedicated to finding lost items in the river, displayed what its members collected from the river. Brown said the park district has already notified Water Lantern Festival organizers that proposals for the event will not be approved in the future. “We will learn from this experience for evaluating events that have activities planned in the water,” Brown said. “We are a responsible steward of the river and expect that others adhere to the same standards. This didn’t occur with this event and it is disappointing.”

The Water Lantern Festival, on its website, stated, “All lanterns are 100% eco-friendly (made from wood and rice paper) and will be completely cleaned up after the event by our awesome staff and incredible team.”

However, despite that promise, the lamps were cleaned up by members of Loot the Deschutes, which posted a video on Instagram of a member dumping around 75 lamps onto the ground from a backpack. The group said the Water Lantern Festival organizers reached out to Loot the Deschutes asking for help cleaning up and apologizing for the mess.

Bend Mayor Melanie Kebler said while the city did not approve the festival, she shares the same sentiment as the community regarding the event.

“What Loot the Deschutes does already is great, and this is above and beyond to respond to an event and immediately start trying to clean up after it when the organizers failed to do so,” Kebler said. “I get the sentiment, but I don’t think there is any real way to keep the trash out of the river. If you want to put the lanterns along a pathway or in a park, where they can be picked up, that’s great. It doesn’t make sense to me to put stuff like that in the river.”

Lled Smith, a member of Loot the Deschutes, said the hundreds of lanterns he and his colleagues recovered from the river were similar to the LED candles with tiny switches at the bottom commonly put in windows during Christmas time.

“Three people have gone down the river looking for candles today, which is a lot of work to do. It takes hours to float the river looking for stuff,” Smith said Tuesday.

Fortunately, Smith said he believes he and his colleagues were able to get most of them out of the water, but plan to do a thorough job before calling off the search.

“I just swam for three hours, and I only found like five,” Smith said. “It is superclean out there right now. We are going to go downstream and check if there are any down there.”