Lotus Festival Dragon Boat racers left high and dry

Echo Park’s scaled down Lotus Festival, scheduled for next week,  keeps getting smaller and smaller. The  organizers announced earlier this year that the giant festival celebrating Asian and Pacific cultures would return to Echo Park Lake this July after budget cuts forced the city’s Recreation and Parks Department to cancel  the 2009 event.  But apparently reviving the Lotus Festival on a smaller-scale has proved a challenge.  Organizers have announced that the popular Dragon Boat Races have been canceled, and offered the teams – which in years past have paid $125 to participate in the races – to return their money.  The email sent out by Heritage Asian Pacific, one of the groups involved in the event, blamed “unforeseen complications” but did not provide many details:

“After much discussion and deliberation, HAP, Inc. has made this difficult decision to cancel the races, we are a not-for profit organization. Our goal is to continue to provide scholarships to graduating high school students to further their higher education aspirations.  It is due to these unforeseen complications that will prevent us to provide such an important and necessary benefit for those most in need of our scholarships.”

Dragon boat photo by Tammy Manet/Flickr