Milwaukee (CBS 58) - Eight Milwaukee County Supervisors have sponsored a resolution supporting a bill that would limit the number of mylar balloons people are allowed to release at once.

The bill states that if someone releases 10 or more balloons into the air, they are subject to a $500 fine. 

“Mylar balloons have a metal coating on them and when they come in contact with our power lines it causes a spark, it can cause an outage,” WE Energies Spokesperson Brendan Conway said. 

We Energies reports that 120,000 people have lost power since 2020 due to the balloons getting caught in power lines. 

“While you may let them loose in the middle of nowhere, they’re going to come down somewhere and they could come down on our powerlines and that becomes a real problem,” Conway said. 

Natalie Aquila owns the So Sweet Party Shop in Elm Grove and says half the balloons she sells are mylar. 

“The best practice is to keep them on a weight, so they are not getting released unintentionally,” Aquila said. “You just want to cut them to release the helium and dispose of them properly which is just trash.”