Barton Site Water Issues

Barton Site Water Issues Cover-Up and Lies

Spring/Summer of 2023, Barton had been accumulating a large amount of water on their property. In June, some noticed that they had moved the waddles from inside the fence allowing the water to come out onto Laura Drive and make its way into the neighborhood storm drains and eventually to the lake.

Here is a picture of the waddles that were moved from the inside. It was taken on July 1, 2023, the day after the incident described below. This photo is date stamped.

At 8:21 PM on the evening of June 30, 2023,

The picture shows two construction workers from the Barton property collecting some of the water coming off the Barton property and flowing into the gutter on Laura Drive. A Oliver Park resident asked them what they were doing and one of them nervously said they were testing the water and the other tried to distance himself from the conversation.

An Oliver Park resident did some research and it was determined these workers were most likely trying to figure out how much silt would be left on the road if they illegally released more water. If this was a legitimate scientific test they would have been using test tubes. For their purposes, they could use any clear bottle and just look at it to see how much dirt was in it.

At 11pm it was witnessed there was a large amount of water being pumped off of the Barton property and into the storm drains.

Here is a photo taken later the next day showing all the silt left behind on Laura Drive.

An Oliver Park resident reported the incident to the Nevada Department of Conservation & Natural Resources, Division of Environmental Protection who sent someone out immediately. After this, there were no more illegal water releases. The resident did not include the photos we have in the complaint so Barton was free to claim that the release was inadvertent as they did in the newspaper article.

A group of Oliver Park residents called Barton and they sent out two women from their public relations department to meet with our group of homeowners. This quickly devolved into a shouting match between a resident and one of the Barton women who claimed that Barton would never do anything illegal. The Oliver Park group at this meeting never had the opportunity to tell her that there were photos and videos because things deteriorated so quickly. The Oliver Park group later realized that this must have been one of the “meetings with the neighbors” that Barton claimed that they had done.

Later Barton submitted that article to the newspaper. We believe their motive was damage control in case anyone important learned of the report.

This whole incident is extremely important. The photo of the waddles moved from inside the fence is very strong evidence that the release was intentional and therefore, Barton cares very little about the environment and is willing to do illegal acts that create damage. The newspaper article is very strong evidence that Barton lies and covers up their illegal actions. Therefore, any claims that Barton makes to Douglas County, TRPA etc. must be carefully scrutinized–particularly promises of future environmental actions such as a vanpool or water treatment plant, that they are likely to discontinue once they get what they want and no one is checking on them.