Michigan Department of Environmental Quality
Flint Michigan Water Crisis
Estimated impact: $600M+ in infrastructure remediation; incalculable public health damage
Flint switched its water source to the Flint River without proper corrosion control treatment, causing lead to leach from aging pipes into drinking water. 100,000+ residents were exposed to dangerous lead levels. State officials dismissed resident complaints and manipulated testing data for over a year.
Decision context
Whether to treat the Flint River water with corrosion inhibitors (costing ~$100/day) or proceed without treatment to save costs, and whether to investigate or dismiss resident complaints about water quality.
Biases present in the decision
Toxic combinations
- Echo Chamber
- Blind Sprint
Reference class base rates
Across all 146 curated case studies in our library:
Lessons learned
- Cognitive misering: regulators accepted surface-level compliance with water testing protocols rather than investigating anomalous results
- Confirmation bias led officials to dismiss community complaints as uninformed rather than valid data points
- The $100/day corrosion treatment that was skipped to save costs ultimately caused $600M+ in remediation
Source: Michigan Civil Rights Commission, "The Flint Water Crisis: Systemic Racism Through the Lens of Flint" (2017); Flint Water Advisory Task Force Report (2016) (Post Mortem)
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