Three top area bands will hold a benefit concert next month to raise awareness of potential dangers that may accompany a spate of energy development plans across New York State.    

“Life is Water: A Concert to Defend the Finger Lakes Against Unsafe Gas Drilling” will be held Saturday, Dec. 5, at 8 p.m. at the Historic State Theater in downtown Ithaca and features the Horse Flies, the Sim Redmond Band and Donna the Buffalo.    

Proceeds benefit the Shaleshock Citizens Action Alliance, whose members are particularly concerned with gas drilling development in the Finger Lakes region of the Marcellus Shale. The Marcellus Shale is a large deposit of marine sedimentary rock in the eastern United States, extending throughout the Appalachian Basin. Named for a distinctive area of exposure near Marcellus, N.Y., it has largely untapped energy reserves into which developers are eager to drill. According to local Shaleshock member Chris Tate, the alliance will show short educational videos at intermissions, which examine more deeply the issue of gas drilling.    

“Do we want a few years worth of gas, or do we want our water?” he asks, rhetorically. “People would have to leave the Finger Lakes — it is that nasty.” Shaleshock is also skeptical of state agencies’ efforts to oversee possible drilling projects in Tompkins, Broome and other Southern Tier counties, particularly with new processes that allow for horizontal drilling. “The DEC sounds like lobbyists for the gas industry rather than an agency that protects us,” Tate says.    

Alliance member Lisa Wright, of the Town of Ithaca, says meeting attendance has multiplied by the dozens since the organization was created last year. “It is an alliance that is very democratic; we're without leaders and include groups that do different things (to raise community awareness). From awareness stems appropriate actions.”    

One effort involved going door-to-door among regional landowners and neighbors to get a sense of their awareness or involvement in gas drilling, being compassionate rather than confrontational, as landowners are sometimes victimized by middlemen who get them to lease their land for prices below market value, Wright says. At the same time, this approach is considered too even-handed by hardcore activists, she adds.    

“We can’t demonize the landowners, but we get people who want a ban (on drilling), she says. “This is about the community and even the larger issue of landowners who can't make a living as farmers. They’re victims but they are potentially victimizing other groups. This is a recipe for divisiveness among the community.”    

One particular concern of environmentalists is a drilling procedure called hydraulic fracturing, or hydro-fracking. This process releases the gas that sits in pores throughout Marcellus Shale. Some 9 million gallons of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, is forced through the shale into the reserves. Half of this fluid remains in the ground; the rest, considered industrial waste, must be disposed of. But Tate notes that machine-ware is corroded by the fluid, and there are no treatment plants large enough to process the water. “It’s just insidious,” he says.    

Band members themselves are knowledgeable about the issue for which they are raising money. “I think a lot of people just have no idea about the possible consequences of hydro-fracking, the kind of drilling that they use to get gas from the Marcellus Shale,” says Sim Redmond, singer/guitarist of the Sim Redmond Band.    

“What the gas company will do is force a lot of high pressure water mixed with all sorts of toxic chemicals down into the ground to fracture the rock and release the natural gas,” he says. “Unfortunately they do this right next to where people live and the process threatens to contaminate our water supplies we drink, swim in or use to irrigate crops.”    

Photo by Thomas Hoebbel The Horse Flies will play at the "Life is Water" benefit, December 5

Judy Hyman, violinist of the Horse Flies, speaks of environmental dangers, such as an instance where nearby gas drilling apparently allowed a Candor man to light the water coming out of a faucet in a property he was renovating.    

“Without considerable resistance and regulation, we are threatened by thousands of wells, not just a few,” she says. “This has happened in Colorado, Texas, northern Pennsylvania and other parts of the country, and the consequences have been horrific. Not only is the beauty of the landscape scarred forever, but, much more importantly, the water in wells, aquifers and lakes can be permanently ruined.”     Redmond adds, “Basically, we are asking that Gov. Patterson make sure that this drilling can be done safely and without harming public health before he lets the gas companies run rampant and destroy our beautiful state.”    

Tickets for the show can be bought at the State Theatre Box Office ($12.50-$18.50) and Gold Circle; call (800) 919-6272 or 277-8283, or reach them on the Web at www.stateofithaca.com

TAGGED WITH: gas drilling, hydro-fracking, Marcellus