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Groups around the state aired their concerns about natural gas drilling at Woodstock-like event.

LEHMAN TWP. – The Northeast Pennsylvania Citizens in Action Group got a little help from their friends Saturday at their first ever Gas Stock concert and rally.

The concert brought together groups from around the state to air concerns and share and disseminate information about natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale.

Nine artists performed on the event’s main stage in front of a banner replicating the famous dove and guitar frets Woodstock logo, but with a horizontal drilling rig replacing the guitar.

Covers of activist anthems abounded, and some performed original tunes about opposition to gas drilling.

“Smell of death, all around. Those lousy noisy drills, the only sound. Wish they just kept that shale in the ground,” Drew Kelly, of Scranton, crooned in a song he wrote for the concert, “Talkin’ Marcellus Shale Drillin’ Blues.”

Sisters Val and Erin LaCerra, of Williamsport, performed several songs about gas drilling, including Modern Day Dinosaurs, a song Val LaCerra said focuses not only on environmental concerns, but the economics as well.

“It’s about why people do this, they’re already impoverished, and they see leasing their land as a way to make money. The gas companies didn’t inform the residents of what would happen,” she said of the song, which features the lyrics “hold me back, hold me back. I just wanted Chris and Katie to have nice clothes on their backs. Now I wanna kill, I wanna kill. Cause it’s 25 years later and I’m still paying medical bills.”

The free concert, sponsored by the Northeast Pennsylvania Citizens in Action Group, ran from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., though for one family the day began a lot earlier. Don Williams, of Montgomery County, set out from Wilkes-Barre’s Nesbitt Park at 6:30 a.m. and walked more than 10 miles to the fairgrounds together with his daughters, Lisa and Lauren Williams, and two local bloggers, Mark Cour and Herb Baldwin.

“I’ve attended several of these meetings where the gas industry people basically said, if you drove here and you don’t support what we’re doing, you’re a hypocrite. I remembered that,” Williams said. “That’s why I did it, being able to say I had the lowest carbon footprint here today.”

State Reps. Eddie Day Pashinski and Phyllis Mundy attended the event in a show of support, organizer Roxanne Pauline, of Taylor, said. Canvassers for other politicians also set up tables at the event.

“Clean air and water aren’t party issues. There are a lot of people on both sides of the aisle who have come together to say clean air and clean water matter,” Pauline said.

The event also featured a “soap box” area under one of the fairgrounds pavilions, where speakers could air their views on drilling and other environmental issues, as well as story tellers, a drumming and song circle, a morning yoga program and food vendors.

Organizers said they hoped to raise awareness and educate citizens about the risks of natural gas drilling through the event, which they estimated about 500 attended.

“There are a lot of people who that don’t even know the issue exists,” Pauline said. “This really hasn’t reached the cities, because people in the cities haven’t been affected by it yet.”

Andy Asher, of Larksville, said he was still on the fence about gas drilling, but attending the event has made him more hesitant about natural gas drilling in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

“I’ve been trying to stay open-minded,” Asher said, “but it seems the more I learn, the easier it becomes to at least get behind the idea of at least a moratorium for a year on gas drilling.”

Though some also wished local turnout could have been larger, organizers said environmental activists from as far away as Pittsburg, Philadelphia and upstate New York attended and swapped contact information, making the concert the first step in the formation of a statewide coalition, Pauline said.

Pauline said the groups plan to meet Sept. 14 in Avoca to discuss plans, and that a march on Washington may be in the works.

Copyright The Time Leader

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