Dear Editor:

The SC Peach Festival regrets the unfortunate weather that was experienced at Saturday night’s Peach Beach.

As many of you know, an isolated thunderstorm with damaging winds struck suddenly at Lake Whelchel. The roof of the stage was blown off and water poured down onto the stage, damaging the sound equipment for the night’s entertainment.

Because of the severity of the damage and the inability of the bands to perform without the impaired equipment, the Peach Beach was canceled only 15 minutes into the performance.

We have received several requests for ticket refunds, but it is not the policy of the SC Peach Festival to offer rain checks for outdoor events. As a nonprofit community organization, the Festival is not in a financial situation to handle such requests. The Festival was required to pre-pay the bands, the sound stage company, the sanitation company and had pre-paid their portion of the improvements to the Lake Whelchel site. None of those payments were refundable.

The SC Peach Festival also invested funds in order to offer Thursday, Friday and Saturday events to our community at no charge. Given the current economic conditions, a concerted effort was made to keep the costs to our citizens as low as possible.

The SC Peach Festival’s Board of Governors is made up of 20 individuals, none of whom receive any compensation for their tireless efforts to pull together this community event. In addition to the Board of Governors, dozens of volunteers and sponsors give of themselves to bring this celebration to our area.

It is the sincere hope of the SC Peach Festival that our citizens will understand our position and allow that an act of nature is something that the Festival cannot control. We sincerely seek your continued support as we strive to keep this tradition alive and begin plans for next year’s events.

Sincerely, The Board of Governors

SC Peach Festival