Preview: Healdsburg Climate Fest 2024

Today is Earth Day Eve, aka the greenest day of the year here in Healdsburg: Climate Fest 2024! Our homegrown environmental festival — also known as Festival del Clima, now in its second year — drew around 2,000 people to the plaza last April, according to organizers from the Climate Action Healdsburg group. And they expect even more to show up this year. The main event began at noon and runs through 4 p.m., at which point the legendary Rocio La Dama de La Cumbia will take the stage to play everyone out, through 6 p.m. tonight. The count of environment-themed booths lining the plaza is up from 50 last year to more than 70 this time around. To name a few particularly intriguing booths: One will provide more details on a new, citizen-led initiative in town that will attempt to plant 500 additional native trees along on the streets of Healdsburg, starting with 50 trees on our “neglected” March Avenue thoroughfare. Another booth, manned by three overachieving teens from Healdsburg High, will show off an algae-powered battery they made. (Careful — it doesn’t smell the best.) The kids just won a big state competition called SkillsUSA for their slimy contraption, and are now headed to nationals. Yet another booth will show off a high-tech beaver hutch that Healdsburg High School art teacher Linus Lancaster and his students just constructed. That contraption, which aims to publicize the benefits of beavers and their dam technology for local waterways, is named “Beaver Lodge Analogue.” It’s a motorized, remote-controlled land and water vehicle with a GoPro camera attached, the art teacher says on Instagram — and it will eventually be used for a project called “Your River, Downtown” that will involve “installing video screens around town and showing river footage both above and below water.” In another radical Climate Fest moment around 2 p.m. — this one involving Jessica Martin, who runs the art program at West Side Elementary, along with Lancaster of course — a massive “Aerocene” balloon, made from thousands of used plastic bags, will be launched into the air above the plaza. “This project is a message from all of us, especially children, to take better care of our planet and pay attention to what we consume,” Martin writes on Instagram. The festival actually kicked off earlier this morning around 9 a.m. with a 5k run/walk through town, emceed by Mayor David Hagele. So, yeah — the party has officially started. Get over there! (Source: Healdsburg Tribune & Healdsburg Tribune & Healdsburg Tribune & HUSD Arts via Instagram)