Deerpark Arts School Says China-Linked Group Targeting It With ‘Lies’

Alex Scilla (L), founder of New Paltz-based NYenvironcom, and Grace Woodard at the at the Mamakating Farmers Market in Wurtsboro, on Sept. 2, 2022. (Epoch Times)

DEERPARK, N.Y.—A New Paltz-based group with ties to China is using questionable environmental claims to raise money in its years-long effort to target a group of Chinese Americans and their performing arts school in Deerpark, New York.

The group, NYEnvironcom, launched a fundraiser on Facebook in late September, claiming it was seeking funding for an environmental lawsuit against the arts school.

The lawsuit in question alleges that the school and rehearsal spaces hosted at a site called Dragon Springs contaminated a local river with wastewater. Results provided to the court in June, however, showed all the samples were under the legal limit. When attorneys representing Dragon Springs pointed this out, the group came back with three more samples in August.

“After previously failing to show any evidence of illegal contamination, these samples suddenly appear to paint a perfect picture of contamination. And yet, we have security footage showing they are lying about where these samples come from,” said Dr. George Xu, vice president of Dragon Springs, in a statement to The Epoch Times.

Dragon Springs has been a mainstay of the small town of Deerpark, New York, for more than 20 years. It includes a Tang Dynasty-style Buddhist temple, rehearsal spaces for performing arts company Shen Yun, and a campus hosting two religious arts schools, Fei Tian College and Fei Tian Academy of the Arts.

Dragon Springs and Shen Yun Performing Arts were founded by adherents of the spiritual practice Falun Gong who had escaped brutal persecution in China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) considers Dragon Springs a prime target, perceiving it as a “headquarters” of Falun Gong adherents’ efforts to counter the persecution.

“Attack the overseas Falun Gong headquarters and bases systematically and strategically,” reads a CCP directive document dated 2017, obtained by The Epoch Times.

NYEnvironcom was founded in 2019 by Alex Scilla, an American who had until that point lived in China for at least 15 years. He runs the group together with Grace Woodard, a local activist, and presents it as an environmental outfit. To this day, Scilla maintains ties to China, including to a company in Tianjin that’s listed as a “partner” of NYEnvironcom on the group’s website.

An investigative report published by The Epoch Times previously revealed Scilla’s close ties to China and the fact that virtually all of his group’s efforts, just like Woodard’s, are focused on Dragon Springs.

In its latest effort, NYEnvironcom appears to be using American environmental law in an effort to target Dragon Springs.

Lawsuit

NYEnvironcom filed its lawsuit in the Southern District of New York in January, claiming that a “ponded area” by the Basher Kill River on the Dragon Springs property had been contaminated with fecal coliform.

In June, the group submitted to the court laboratory samples it alleged were collected in the “ponded area” and the river, claiming some of them exceeded the legal limit for fecal coliform. The laboratory results, meanwhile, appear to show that all the samples were under the legal limit.

As mentioned above, after this was pointed out by Dragon Springs attorneys, the group came back with three more samples in August.

The August samples presented to the court—but which were not admitted by the judge—appeared crafted to paint a damning picture. The lab report shows one Basher Kill sample collected upstream with relatively low coliform presence, then another from the “ponded area” that showed a coliform count about 12 times the legal limit, and then another one from Basher Kill, seemingly downstream, showing an elevated yet still acceptable level.

According to Dragon Springs representatives, the claims are contradicted by the evidence. They point out that the “Basher Kill” sample is presented as if it indicates downstream pollution. Security camera footage reviewed by The Epoch Times, however, shows a woman appearing to collect the sample in question from a tributary stream that enters the river upstream from the “ponded area.”

“They are lying about where these samples come from,” Xu alleges.

Secondly, the “ponded area” is in fact a flat piece of riverbank that turns into a pond when flooded with water from the river itself, as images of the area reviewed by The Epoch Times indicate. The extremely elevated sample was allegedly collected on the morning of Aug. 22, after months of drought that decreased the river’s water levels. As a result, the area dried up and the pond disappeared, with just a few puddles left.

Dried up area on the Basha Kill riverbank in Deerpark, N.Y., on Aug. 30, 2022. When the water level in the river gets high enough, the area is flooded and forms a pond. (Courtesy of Dragon Springs)

“There’s no telling what may have been soaking in these tiny, isolated puddles, given the densely wooded area is teeming with wildlife, and animal feces contain coliform, too,” Xu said.

The District Court ended up disregarding on procedural grounds both of the plaintiff’s August samples, as well as the Dragon Springs response to it. The court will next be ruling on whether the lawsuit should be dismissed.

The Dragon Springs site is served by its own wastewater treatment plant that’s quarterly tested for the quality of the water it releases.

“Our modern wastewater treatment plant eliminates any coliform presence. Regular testing proves this. Furthermore, the treated water is released into the ground. No wastewater is discharged into the river,” Xu said.

Meanwhile, Scilla and Woodard, on a Facebook page they have used to solicit money for the lawsuit, have made a more extreme claim, saying that water “ponded in Basher Kill” is contaminated with fecal coliform counts “25 times” above the legal limit—twice as much as they claimed in the court papers.

As of Oct. 26, five people had donated a total of $235: Scilla, his mother, Woodard, NYEnvironcom board member Patrick Chan, and another individual.

NYEnvironcom, meanwhile, appears to have deployed a strategy of using its claims to generate negative media coverage.

Xu said: “We’re troubled by the fact that local media appears to be working with one of the plaintiffs in what we believe is a frivolous lawsuit against us.

“We witnessed these reporters in the plaintiff’s backyard, and it seems they were flying drones over our property, a campus where children attend school.”

NYEnvironcom and its lawyer didn’t respond to emailed questions by press time.