It’s one of America’s biggest party cities. So why is New Orleans banning shiny balloons and confetti?
Mourners release balloons at a vigil for New Orleans police officer Daryle Holloway in New Orleans in June 2015. New Orleans, known for its celebrations and festive spirit, is now banning the release of metallic balloons. (Pho credit: Lee Celano/Reuters via CNN Newsource)
(CNN) — New Orleans, known for its celebrations and festive spirit, is now banning the release of metallic balloons – a decision that follows repeated disruption to the city’s electrical services and sewer systems caused by stray and discarded balloons.
The city council passed an ordinance last month banning the release of Mylar balloons and all those coated in metal or other “conductive material.” It doesn’t prohibit buying the balloons.
Over the summer, a wayward cluster of metallic balloons triggered a widespread power outage in Orleans Parish after coming into contact with a power line. The brief outage caused the city’s water pumps to be “tripped offline,” according to area energy provider Entergy, leading to a disruption of the city’s water treatment plant and even causing serious injury to a Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans employee.
“For almost a 24-hour period, the world thought our water supply could be knocked out by a Mylar balloon,” Council Member JP Morell said at a meeting in August.
A vocal public safety advocate, Council Member Joseph Giarrusso began pushing this summer for the ban on metallic balloon releases in New Orleans to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.
“We simply cannot afford to have power outages and hurt ourselves unnecessarily,” Giarrusso told city council in a meeting last month. “And unfortunately, Mylar balloons, those foil balloons, conduct electricity, they cause power outages and they make things unsafe for residents and harder for us to live here.”
Giarrusso’s concerns extend beyond the incident in August, he told CNN; he was motivated by a series of similar events throughout the state and across the nation, all stemming from the mishandling of electrically conductive party decorations.
“I actually spoke to a former state senator who told me that in another part of the state, somebody had fired a (metallic) confetti cannon at a power line and the electricity arced back to the float and almost caught the float on fire,” he said.
In February 2023, officials said, a confetti cannon may have played a role in a brief power failure during a Carnival celebration in New Orleans. Video posted on social media shows the power going out at the parade moments after a confetti cannon was fired from a float.
The city council passed an ordinance in July that included a ban on confetti cannons and confetti at parades.
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Desiree Ontiveros, founder of New Orleans based Badass Balloon Co., said she supports the ban on metallic balloons but argues city efforts should focus on upgrading outdated infrastructure instead.
“There’s just better ways for City Council to be spending their time than banning balloons,” she said, calling for investments that would more effectively tackle the root of the problem.
“Yes, balloons shouldn’t be released — it’s littering, at the end of the day,” Ontiveros said, pointing out her company has long discouraged releases, even including a policy against releases on its website. Badass Balloon Co. specializes in biodegradable latex balloons and air-filled installations designed for creative displays rather than soaring into the sky.
It’s not only a problem in New Orleans. While balloon releases can be a symbolic act for people either celebrating or mourning, they also pose significant environmental risks. In places like the University of Nebraska, the practice has become commonplace during the school’s homecoming game when students, upholding a decades-long tradition, release thousands of balloons into the sky.
Balloons are passed out before the game between the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Minnesota Golden Gophers at Memorial Stadium in October 2018 in Lincoln, Nebraska. (Photo credit: Steven Branscombe/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
But even Cornhuskers with their long-standing tradition are facing a balloon ban of their own. The Association of Students for the University of Nebraska passed a bill last month opposing the release of “red balloons at home football games after Nebraska’s first touchdown,” according to the Daily Nebraskan.
“Even though that they do use biodegradable balloons, those take around seven years to decompose and the strings aren’t biodegradable themselves,” Luke McDermott, the association’s external vice president, told CNN affiliate KLKN. “Not only is there impacts with it being on the ground and people can see it, but also, like, animals can eat it. They can kill animals.”
People gathered for a vigil in honor of Breonna Taylor release balloons in her memory in June 2020 in Louisville, Kentucky. (Photo credit: Brett Carlsen/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
Improperly disposed-of balloons can also end up in the ocean and along shorelines, becoming part of marine debris, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program.
Discarded balloons that enter the ocean can then become mistaken for food and eaten by wildlife, causing internal injury, starvation and even death, NOAA says.
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