SOUTH COUNTY — Popular counter-culture music and art festival Lightning in a Bottle will not return to Lake San Antonio this year after county officials quietly terminated a multi-year agreement with the event organizers in the wake of an ongoing dispute over attendance limits and festival attendee deaths in consecutive years.

According to county Resource Management Agency director Carl Holm, the Board of Supervisors agreed in closed session last summer to terminate the contact due to contract compliance issues. A termination letter was sent to event organizer The Do Lab on Aug. 28. The contract had been due to run through 2021 with an option to continue through 2026.

Despite last summer’s termination notice, the event organizers just announced on Monday this year’s Lightning in a Bottle would be moving to a different venue and would not be held on Memorial Day weekend at the county-owned lake. It didn’t announce the new location. The Do Lab co-founder Dede Flemming was unavailable for comment.

Holm said the main issue was the event exceeding the 20,000-person attendance cap in both 2017 and 2018, including an estimated 35,000 attendance at last year’s event. (Other attendance estimates put the number at about 37,500.) He said event organizers were told after the 2017 event exceeded the attendance cap that they needed to comply for public safety reasons. They told county officials they didn’t want to turn away prospective attendees at the venue’s entrance and subsequently far exceeded the limit at last year’s event.

While Holm said the deaths of festival-goers Baylee Gatlin after the 2017 festival and Tyler Schripsema after last year’s festival were not reasons for the contract termination, he noted that attendance caps are related to law enforcement and other public safety staffing. Those are done on a per-capita basis, for the event.

“Attendance has a huge effect on public safety out there,” Holm said. “It’s possible that could have had an effect on the fact that there were deaths two years in a row. They had a second chance (at contract compliance) and they blew it.”

Supervisor Chris Lopez, whose district includes Lake San Antonio, said he held a community meeting shortly after the contract termination that included the event organizers, South County residents and public safety representatives to discuss the issue. Lopez said talks have been conducted between the county and the event organizers on a resolution but they did not progress quickly enough for this year’s event. He said he believes any issues can be resolved and he’s still hopeful Lightning in a Bottle will return to the lake, or be replaced by some other event.

“We’re trying to signal to all (event) promoters that Lake San Antonio is open for business,” Lopez said.

Gatlin, a 20-year-old from Ventura, died of multi-organ failure, hypothermia, and dehydration after ingesting drugs at the festival including LSD. Her death was initially ruled as due to LSD overdose by a former San Luis Obispo County medical examiner, who reportedly revised the cause of death after medical community skepticism and media scrutiny.

Gatlin’s family reportedly sued The Do Lab and the medical examiner last year, alleging she didn’t receive proper medical attention for hours after falling ill at the festival and there wasn’t adequate medical personnel on site.

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On Tuesday, the supervisors agreed to convert Lake San Antonio to a regional day use county park instead of a resort under outside management, while continuing to offer overnight camping and boating, as well as other outdoor activities, but Holm said that decision was not linked to the Lightning in a Bottle termination. The long-running Wildflower Triathlon event will continue to be held at the lake, he said.

Meanwhile, Lake Nacimiento will continue to be operated by outside management as a resort. Both lake resorts are being run by Cal Parks under a contract that expires at the end of next month, and Holm said the county’s goal is to have a new longer-term deal up to 5-7 years in length for Nacimiento in place by then.