Felony littering arrests follow video of drainwater dumping in a Doral development
Last week’s Instagram video of a truck dumping liquid into a Doral residential development lake turned into Tuesday’s arrests of the president and manager of a Cutler Bay business that cleans, among other things, storm drains and septic tanks.
South Florida Vac-Con president Julio Barreto, 51, and manager Dayron Barreto, 25, had been released from Miami-Dade Corrections custody by Wednesday morning.
The company and both Barretos also received citations from Miami-Dade County, each with a $2,500 fine for “illegally dumping 100 gallons of storm drain water on private property for profit.”
Also getting $2,500 citations were the development, Valencia of Doral, for “allowing the owner of Vac-Con” to dump the water at 10000 NW 45th Ter.; and De La Torre General Service (president Yolhams De La Torre, according to state records) for contracting Barreto’s company and “allowing it to dump unknown drainage substance into the lake.”
The Instagram account OnlyInDade posted video Friday of a truck dumping water in a development’s man-made lake.
A phone number and “South Florida” could be easily read on the truck’s passenger door. OnlyInDade has 876,000 Instagram followers. So, by Friday’s end, posters had identified Barreto’s company and the city of Doral posted that the company had been fined with the matter passed along to the Miami-Dade Department of Environmental Resources Management.
The Barretos’ arrest reports say they told police they were contracted to pump out 22 storm drains at Valencia for $150 per drain. Pumping the first 21 drains Thursday and Friday filled the vacuum truck, the reports say the Barretos admitted, so they dumped 100 gallons of the stormwater into the lake to make room for the last drain.
When the last drain was pumped, they said, they trucked their liquid load to the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer facility.
This story was originally published June 22, 2022 at 10:24 AM.
