Water is Life Concert, Ithaca. Dec. 5

“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.