Found a report about a water crisis in Flint that was buried for months

I was digging through old documents from Michigan's state records last week and found a memo from 2014. It showed that officials knew the Flint River water had high lead levels back in April but they didn't tell the public until October. The report had specific numbers, like 15 parts per billion of lead in some samples, which is above the safety limit. It was stamped but never released to the news or the city council. I found it by accident while looking up environmental compliance forms from that era. Has anyone else stumbled onto hidden government records like this where the timeline didn't match up?

2 comments

2 Comments

janac5912d ago

That part about the timeline not matching up really gets me. Finding a memo from April when the public wasn't told until October is just wrong, plain and simple. I hope you kept a copy of that report because someone needs to answer for that delay.

jenny58012d ago

Used to be one of those people who thought stuff like this was just a paperwork mistake or someone covering their butt. Always figured "better late than never" for public warnings. But seeing that timeline gap laid out like that... nope, that's not a oopsie, that's a deliberate choice. Six months of knowing and doing nothing while people might have been exposed is hard to explain away as anything but negligence. Really rattled my trust in the whole process, honestly.