This year’s Earth Day event was reduced to a small rain-soaked gathering at William Land Park on Saturday after newly enforced insurance policies pushed the activity off campus. The group holding the event was hoping for a turnout of around 150 people, but only about nine people attended.

“We’ve had Earth Day at Sac State for about 10 to 12 years,” said Paul Barth, member of the Sierra Club, a non-profit organization that hosted the event. “This was plan B.”

Director of Student Activities Lou Camera said insurance would have had to be provided for all participating in the event.

Throughout the years, the Sierra Club has taken out event insurance for each Earth Day event held at Sac State.

Now Sac State is requiring each participating vendor to have its own million-dollar general liability insurance, said Kathy Reis member of the Sierra Club.

Sac State has always had the policy of requiring insurance for each individual vendor participating; however, the Earth Day event had been granted exemptions the last few years.

Steve Somsen, risk and insurance manager, said Sac State told the organization last year that it would be the last time an exemption would be granted.

“We agreed to waive the insurance for the vendors and told them this was their final warning,” Somsen said.

The Sierra Club is unable to provide insurance for each individual vendor that would have been participating in the Earth Day event.

“For the food vendors, that’s not a problem. Most of them have individual insurance; it’s the non-profit organizations that don’t have money to have their own insurance,” Reis said.

“When I went to talk to Louis (Camera), he was pretty much, ‘No way, too much of a risk, not going to happen,’ ” said Alicia Lampley, president of the Environmental Students Organization, a Sac State organization which participated in the event this year.

Somsen said if an organization wants to take out day insurance, the cost depends on the nature of what is going on; but if an organization already has insurance, then there is no need for day insurance.

“If Wienerschnitzel wanted to set up a hot dog booth on campus, it wouldn’t be a problem because they already have insurance,” Somsen said.

The vendors would have had to pay anywhere from $125 to $200 per exhibitor, Barth said. “(Vendors) don’t have the money to pay for such an event, they are operating on a shoestring budget,” Barth said.

If vendors participating in the event don’t take out insurance, someone who receives an injury could sue Sac State, Camera said.

“The group was told they needed insurance last year,” Camera said. “They could have done it if they would have taken insurance out on the event.”

“The insurance requirements have changed over the years,” Reis said. “Sac State gave us a year pre-warning that we needed insurance.”

Many of the groups that usually participate in Earth Day at Sac State are non-profit organizations.

The Environmental Students Organization wanted to not only hold the event on campus, but also sponsor it, yet would have also needed insurance for its vendors.

“We would have liked to have kept it at Sac State,” Reis said. “They told us last year we needed insurance. We asked the vice president for exemption, but we were denied.”

Because of the low turnout of this year’s Earth Day at William Land Park, the Sierra Club plans to find a new venue to hold its annual event.

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Anthony Giovanini can be reached at [email protected]