Flint Water Crisis

Flint Water Crisis

In 2014, the city of Flint water source was switched from Detroit’s system to Flint River. Lack of proper treatment and testing of the water corroded pipelines and caused lead leaching into the water. Unfortunately, the lead contaminated water caused health issues for Flint residents. In 2015, the water source switched back to Detroit water supply. However, high level of lead continued to be in the water because of corroded pipelines. In 2016, president declared state of emergency in Genesee County. Consequently, the project of service line replacement started. Meanwhile, relief agencies distributed bottles of water to the residents. Table 1 indicates a summary of the timeline of events.
Table 1- Timeline of events-Water Crisis-Flint
June 2012-April 2013 Flint Looked For Cheaper Water
April 25, 2014 Switched from Detroit Water Supply To The Flint River
Feb 25, 2015 Tests Showed High Lead Levels In Home
September 1, 2015 Virginia Tech Team Found ‘Serious’ Lead Levels In Flint
October 16, 2015 Switched Back To Detroit Water Supply
January 2016 President Declared state of emergency
September, 2016 Machine Learning Models Developed by UM To Predict Its Likelihood Of Having A Lead Service Line
November 10,2016 Bottled water Distribution To Every Home Without A Properly Installed And Maintained Faucet Filter
February 20,2017 The State Considers Ending Bottled Water Distribution

The focus of this project is on the relief agencies response to the crisis from November 10, 2016 to February 20, 2017, as highlighted in the table. Your essay should specifically address the following three items and answer the listed questions.
1. Service Design: How relief agencies designed the service to distribute bottled water?
• Find the number and locations of the points of water distributions.
• How residents received water? For instance, did they go to the distribution centers to receive water on daily basis? Or door-to-door delivery of water by relief agencies was the option? Were the distribution points remote or stationary?
• What are the criteria relief agencies considered to come up with the number and locations of the points of distributions? These criteria can include density of the population in each neighborhood, socio-econometric characteristics of the population.
• Identify the main suppliers of bottled water.
• Find the total budget available for water supply and distribution. How relief agencies spent the budget?
2. Strategic Capacity Planning:
• Determine the required trucks for delivering bottled water from suppliers to point of distribution. If you are not able to find the accurate data, find the capacity of each truck. Then, how many pallets of bottled water can be fitted into each truck? Eventually, based on the population demand that you estimate in part 3 (inventory management), how many trucks are required?
3. Inventory Management:
• First, consider a unit of time (day/week/month).
• What is the inventory level of distribution centers per time unit you considered? (You can report the inventory level per each point of distribution or the accumulative inventory level in all of the centers)
• Was the inventory sufficient to cover the residents demand? How often points of distribution faced shortage?

Please note that:
• If you cannot find data/information for the above questions, it is fine to answer the questions based on some realistic assumptions. For example, in question 3, if the data for weekly inventory in point of distributions is not available do the following steps:
o What is the population of Flint?
o How many liters of water is required per each person per day?
o Based on the population demand, how many bottles of waters is required?
• If you were affected by the crisis, please feel free to share your experience while answering the questions.

Suggested References:
Here are some references. However, to answer the questions you need find more.

cityofflint-2016-Sites to get bottled water. (2016). Cityofflint. https://www.cityofflint.com/2016/05/06/water-distribution-sites-moving-from-fire-stations-to-local-neighborhoods/
cnn-2016-Deliver bottles to homes. (2016). Cnn. https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/health/michigan-flint-water-crisis/index.html
CNN-2021-Flint Water Crisis Fast Facts. (2021). CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/04/us/flint-water-crisis-fast-facts/index.html
Denchak, M. (2018). NRDC-2018-Everything About Flint Water Crisis. NRDC. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/flint-water-crisis-everything-you-need-know
Doc, D., & Id, P. (n.d.). Settlement agreement. https://www.michigan.gov/documents/flintwater/Settlement_Agreement_dated_032717_580103_7.pdf
NPR-2016-Bottled Water Delivery to Flint Residents. (2016). NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/11/501711450/judge-orders-bottled-water-delivery-to-flint-residents-amid-lead-crisis
theguardian-2016-Delivering bottle of water to residents in crisis. (2016). Theguardian; Theguardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/12/flint-michigan-lead-bottled-water-delivery
TheWhiteHouse-2016-FactSheet-FlintWaterCrisis. (2016). The White House. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/03/fact-sheet-federal-support-Flint-water-crisis-response-and-recovery