HANOVER, N.H. (AP) – Tubestock, an annual drinking bash celebrated by Dartmouth College students, may be headed down the river.

For about 20 years, many students have pulled makeshift rafts onto the Connecticut River for a summertime party. Drinking is a big part of tradition, but officials on both sides of the river are working to stop it, saying it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

Hanover Town Manager Julia Griffin said Tubestock is an illegal event and can’t continue. She said town officials are working on regulations that would ban alcohol or rafts and require insurance policies that may be impossible to obtain.

Dartmouth does not sanction Tubestock, which attracted about 1,000 people to the river last July.

Tubestock has no official organizer, although last year, the Greek Leadership Council met with law enforcement officials a week before the party. Frank Glaser, public relations chairman of the GLC, said in an e- mail to the Valley News that students and administrators would work hard to meet the necessary guidelines for Tubestock’s continuity.

“It may be difficult to meet all of these criteria in time for Tubestock this year, but surely by next year the college should have sufficient time to fulfill the guidelines,” Glaser said.

Glaser said even without the alcohol and rafts, “In general, I believe students would be happier seeing Tubestock happen with safety precautions rather than watching as the tradition painfully dies out.”

Hanover and Norwich, Vt., officials began discussing Tubestock last fall after a student drowned while attempting to complete a cross-river swim called the Ledyard Challenge. Although Valentin Valkov’s death was not related to Tubestock, it gave town officials pause about the river party.

“Whenever we have something like that happen on the river, it re-emphasizes for all of us the combination of alcohol and the river is a dangerous combination,” Griffin said.