Chelan's 35th Earth Day Fair celebrates planet, promotes fire readiness at Riverwalk Park

CHELAN – Planet Earth picked a great Goldilocks site when it settled on Riverwalk Park for its annual celebration on Saturday, April 20 - not too hot, not too cold…just right.

The 35th annual Chelan Earth Day Fair chose the theme, Be Fire Ready, to alert citizens to the sobering message behind the music and merriment of the occasion.

The first national Earth Day was held in 1970, thanks to the efforts of Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, who teamed up with campus activist Denis Hayes after a massive oil spill from a Union Oil drilling platform off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. The spill, which leaked an estimated three million gallons of oil over 35 miles of ocean, was the largest oil spill in U.S. history at the time. Today, it ranks third. Still, it was enough to oil the bearings for some speedy federal regulation.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created in 1970, and the Clean Air Act was passed the same year. Not far behind were the Clean Water and Marine Mammal Protection Acts in 1972 and the Endangered Species Act passed in 1973.

By the time Chelan held its first Earth Day Fair in 1989, nearly two decades later, Earth Day was on the verge of spreading worldwide. The first global Earth Day, held in 1990, was observed in nearly three-quarters of the world’s 195 countries.

Today, Earth Day is the world’s largest recruiter to the environmental movement involved in nearly a dozen initiatives from forest restoration (The Canopy Project) to plastics reduction (Planet vs. Plastics). To learn more, visit earthday.org.

Mike Maltais: 360-333-8483 or michael@ward.media