PROBLEM-SOLVING APPLICATION CASE 
Don’t Drink the Water in Flint, Michigan 
Flint, Michigan, is located 70 miles north of Detroit. It
has a population of about 99,000, and roughly 42 per-
cent of its residents live below the poverty line. Fifty-
six percent of the community is African American.
Poor economic conditions were not always the
norm for Flint. The city thrived for years thanks to the
operation of a large General Motors plant, but that
changed when the company downsized the plant in
the 1980s.113
This case is about a series of decisions that led to the
contamination of Flint’s water supply. Michigan’s gover-
nor at the time was Rick Snyder, and the mayor of Flint
was Dayne Walling. In 2016 the governor created a six-
member task force that included experts on issues
ranging from public health to environmental issues to
investigate Flint’s water supply.114 Assume you are a
member of this task force as you analyze this case.
BACKGROUND ON WHAT HAPPENED
Snyder ran for governor in 2010 on the strength of his
business and management experience and the prom-
ise “to bring outside experts to transform financially
languishing municipalities. To do so, he was able to
use an existing law that allowed the governor to ap-
point an ‘emergency manager’ to trump locally elected
officials on key policy decisions.”115 This is an impor-
tant point because Snyder appointed two emergency
managers who played key roles in this case.
According to The Wall Street Journal, one of the
first orders of business for the emergency manager in
2011 was to “find a cheaper source of water than the
Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, which had
been raising rates for years.” Flint’s City Council voted
7–1 in March 2013 to “leave the Detroit system and
use a new system proposed by Genesee County to
draw its own water from Lake Huron.” The move to the
new system was made official by emergency manager
Ed Kurtz in 2013, and state treasurer Andy Dillon
­approved $81 million in financing. The decision was
expected to save the city millions of dollars.116
Kurtz then commissioned a study to find whether
the Flint River could be used as the water supply while
the pipeline from Lake Huron was being built. The
study panel concluded that the river water was one op-
tion, but it presented challenges. It’s not clear whether
other viable options were considered. Scott Kincaid, a
member of Flint’s City Council, told The Wall Street
458 PART 2 Groups
Journal that using the Flint River as a primary water
source “was never discussed” during the council’s
vote. One year later, Darnell Early, the new emergency
manager, ended the city’s arrangement with Detroit
Water and began to implement the plan to use Flint
River water.117
The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality
(MDEQ) then approved permits to upgrade Flint’s water-
treatment plant, enabling it to treat river water. Mike
Glasgow, a lab supervisor at the water treatment facility,
sent an e-mail to the MDEQ saying “the Flint water treat-
ment plant was not ready to start treating Flint River wa-
ter and would do so only ‘against my direction.’” He told
an investigative committee that no one responded. Wa-
ter from the river began to flow to residents’ homes in a
matter of days. Although Glasgow thought this was a
bad idea, and “nobody asked his opinion in any official
way,” he apparently stopped protesting.
Glasgow “testified he expected corrosion-control
chemicals to be used in the treatment process, but the
state didn’t require the chemicals. The plant would not
have been able to add the phosphates in any case . . .
because it didn’t have the necessary equipment and
would have had to wait three to six months to order
and install it. . . . There was a deadline we had to meet.
I almost feel like everything was just happening so
fast . . . so many different things to look at . . . it was
somewhat easy for these things to be overlooked.”118
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WATER?
The water began to turn brown and smell of chlorine.
Residents like LeeAnne Walters began to notice
changes within her family. Everyone began to lose hair,
and the children came down with a host of problems.
Walters told a reporter that “the twins, 3-year-old Gavin
and Gerrett, kept breaking out in rashes. Gavin had
stopped growing. On several occasions, 14-year-old
JD suffered abdominal pains so severe that Walters
took him to the hospital. At one point, all of LeeAnne’s
own eyelashes fell out.”
The city ultimately came to Walters’ home and
tested the water, but according to experts, it used an
inaccurate method to do so. Officials also suggested
that the problem was due to plumbing within the
­Walters home and not to water source contamination.
It turns out that Walters’ family and many others
were suffering from the effects of lead in the water
supply. These effects are more severe for children and
can lead to “irreversible neurological consequences.”
The lead exposure continued for 17 months despite
repeated complaints from Flint residents.
Flint officials sent a notice to all residents in January
2015. It said “that the city’s water contained high lev-
els of trihalomethanes, the byproduct of a disinfectant
used to treat the water. Over time, these chemicals can
cause liver, kidney, and nervous system problems.”
The notice warned “that sick and elderly people might
be at an increased risk, but it said the water was other-
wise safe to drink.”119
The city continued to tell people throughout most of
2015 that the water was fine. Mayor Walling said, “The
city water is safe to drink. My family and I drink it and
use it every day.”120
Other evidence suggest otherwise. Tests by Marc
Edwards, an expert in lead corrosion at Virginia Tech,
revealed lead concentrations “more than twice the
level the EPA classifies as hazardous waste.” This
led to an investigation by Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a
pediatrician at Hurley Medical Center. Her findings
demonstrated that children under age five had lead
concentration levels that had doubled or tripled since
the city switched to using Flint River water.121
There was even a spike in Legionnaires’ disease
in the Flint area. From June 2014 to November 2015,
87 people were hospitalized, and nine died.
Although there is no clear scientific proof that the lead-
contaminated water caused these illnesses, one
expert concluded, “It’s a ‘reasonable conclusion’ given
the link between poor water quality and Legionnaires’
disease in scientific studies elsewhere.”122
Residents of Flint have had many hardships trying
to live with the problem. Consider the cost of using
bottled water for drinking and washing dishes. Tak-
ing showers was also problematic due to the fre-
quency of skin rashes associated with bathing in
tainted water. A survey showed that 80 percent of
the residents substantially changed their bathing
habits because of the water crisis. According to a re-
port in The New York Times, “Some have found
cheap memberships at gyms just outside the city and
use them to bathe more than exercise. Others waited
in a long line last month [March 2014] to receive con-
traptions called Pump-N-Sprays: nozzles and foot
pumps that can be attached to 5-gallon bottles of
water as makeshift showers.”123
WHAT DID THE INVESTIGATIONS
REVEAL?
Tax cutting and the desire to save money played a role
in the damage to Flint. An economist from Michigan
State University concluded that “tax cuts of this magni-
tude, some of which were passed during the first year
of Gov. Snyder’s administration, were bound to have
real consequences.”124
The power and authority of the emergency manag-
ers making the key decisions also affected the chain of
events leading to the tragedy. And officials from two
state agencies—the Department of Environmental
Quality and the Department of Health and Human
Services—contributed as well. They were warned by
Miguel Del Toral, an official from the US Environmental
Protection Agency, that Flint had not put anticorrosion
safeguards in place to protect people from the Flint
River water. These state officials also ignored warnings
from Marc Edwards and Dr. Mona Hana-Attisha. Finally,
the decision to approve permits to improve Flint’s
water-treatment plant by the Department of Environ-
mental Quality was flawed. Officials apparently misin-
terpreted the “federal Lead and Copper Rule, which
required the city to control corrosion in pipes to pre-
vent the leaching of lead.”125
Local officials played a part in that they went along
with the decision to use the Flint River water as an
interim supply while the pipeline to Lake Huron was
being constructed. Photos show them toasting the
decision.126
The governor and his staff demonstrated a lack
of oversight. One report noted, “Neither the gover-
nor nor the governor’s office took steps to reverse
poor decisions by MDEQ and state-appointed emer-
gency managers until October 2015, in spite of
mounting problems and suggestions to do so by se-
nior staff members in the governor’s office, in part
because of continued reassurances from MDEQ
that the water was safe.” The MDEQ also was
faulted for “failing to enforce drinking water regula-
tions, while the state health department was criti-
cized for failing to ‘adequately and promptly act to
protect public health.’”127
As of August 2016, CNN.com reported that “nine
current and former state and local officials face
counts ranging from willful neglect of duty to conspir-
acy over allegations they withheld information from
the public about lead contamination in the city's
drinking water.”128
APPLY THE 3-STEP PROBLEM-
SOLVING APPROACH TO OB
Step 1:  Define the problem.
A. Look first at the Outcomes box of the Organizing
Framework in Figure 11.7 to help identify the
important problem(s) in this case. Remember
that a problem is a gap between a desired and a
current state. State your problem as a gap, and
be sure to consider problems at all three levels.
If more than one desired outcome is not being
Decision Making and Creativity  CHAPTER 11 459
 accomplished, decide which one is most
important and focus on it for steps 2 and 3.
B. Cases have protagonists (key players), and
problems are generally viewed from a particular
protagonist’s perspective. Take the perspective
of a member of the task force investigating this
problem.
C. Use details in the case to identify the key
problem. Don’t assume, infer, or create problems
that are not included in the case.  solve it, or dissolve it (see Section 1.5). Which recom-
Step 2:  Identify causes of the problem by using ma-
terial from this chapter, summarized in the Organizing
Framework shown in Figure 11.7. Causes will appear
in either the Inputs box or the Processes box.  Chapter 11 or one of the earlier chapters to
A. Start by looking at the Organizing Framework
to identify which person factors, if any, are
most likely causes to the defined problem.
For each cause, ask yourself, Why is this a cause
of the problem? Asking why multiple times is
more likely to lead you to root causes of the
problem.
B. Follow the same process for the situation factors.
LEGAL/ETHICAL CHALLENGE
Should Apple Comply with the US Government’s
Requests to Unlock iPhones?
This case considers the long-term implications of
­Apple’s decision to deny local and federal requests to
unlock data on iPhones. It all started with the terrorist
attack perpetrated by Syed Rizwan Farook and his
wife, Tashfeen Malik. The couple killed 14 people in
San Bernardino, California, in 2016.
The FBI wanted to see the contents of Farook’s
phone in order to gain information about others who
may have been involved with the terrorist attack. It
wanted Apple to “create a special version of the
iPhone’s software that only works on the recovered
device. Apple has to sign it with its secret keys in order
to install it on the subject’s iPhone. This custom version
will ‘bypass or disable the auto-erase function’ so it will
not wipe the phone after a number of failed passcode
guesses.”129
Although Apple had already provided the
­government “what it has that fits the usual kind of
460 PART 2 Groups
C. Now consider the Processes box shown in
Figure 11.7. Consider concepts listed at all three
levels. For any concept that might be a cause,
ask yourself, Why is this a cause? Again, do this
for several iterations to arrive at root causes.
C. To check the accuracy or appropriateness of the
causes, map them onto the defined problem.
Step 3:  Make your recommendations for solving the
problem. Consider whether you want to resolve it,
mendation is desirable and feasible?
A. Given the causes identified in Step 2, what are
your best recommendations? Use the content in
propose a solution.
B. You may find potential solutions in the OB in
Action boxes and Applying OB boxes within this
chapter. These features provide insights into
what other individuals or companies are doing in
relationship to the topic at hand.
C. Create an action plan for implementing your
recommendations.
document demands, including information the ter-
rorists had stored in Apple’s cloud service,” it was
not enough. The terrorists had quit backing up their
phone, which forced the FBI to find a way to bypass
Apple’s security features. Apple had no way of do-
ing this. 130 Apple refused to comply with the re-
quest, leading to a court order demanding that it
create the software needed to bypass the phone’s
security features.
In an interview with ABC, Apple CEO Tim Cook said,
“The government shouldn’t be able to force Apple to
compromise the privacy of hundreds of millions of
iPhone users in order to unlock a terrorist’s iPhone.”
He added that it would “force Apple to create ‘the soft-
ware equivalent of cancer.’” The company further con-
tends that “coding a ‘back door’ in the iPhone would
compromise the security of hundreds of millions of its
customers.”