Individual Assignment

SCENARIO: FLINT’S WATER INFRASTRUCTURE REMEDIATION

In 2014, the City of Flint switched its water source to the Flint River without adequate corrosion control, resulting in lead leaching into the drinking water supply. The crisis triggered widespread health impacts, national outrage, and a breakdown of trust between residents and government at all levels. Since 2016, Flint has been engaged in long-term remediation efforts, including:

  • Replacing lead service lines
  • Ensuring compliance with federal drinking water standards
  • Managing legal settlements and court oversight
  • Rebuilding public trust
  • Coordinating across federal, state, and local agencies
  • Addressing community trauma and environmental justice concerns

Despite progress, the work remains politically sensitive, technically complex, and emotionally charged, making coordinated stakeholder management essential for sustaining momentum, rebuilding trust, and ensuring that implementation decisions reflect community needs and legal obligations.

Assignment

Given this context, produce a 2 page brief that provides a stakeholder analysis and a management strategy for advancing Flint’s water remediation and infrastructure replacement goals. Your brief must address the following four components clearly and concisely:

  1. Identification of stakeholders

Map the most relevant stakeholders for Flint’s water infrastructure remediation strategy, taking into account governmental stakeholders (at the local, state, and federal level), community and civil society stakeholders, and other key stakeholders (e.g., media, public health researchers, etc.), and build a power/interest grid.

  1. Analysis of stakeholder dynamics

Choose four of the most important stakeholders and explain their position in the power/interest grid. Discuss how history, power, and legitimacy may shape stakeholder behavior. You may also take your analysis of stakeholders further by, among others, reflecting on:

  • Conflicts between state and local government
  • Community mistrust of official agencies
  • Tensions between speed and accuracy in infrastructure replacement
  • Legal and regulatory pressures
  • Equity concerns (e.g., historically marginalized communities)
  1. Stakeholder management strategy

Given the analysis conducted of four key stakeholders, propose a management strategy for those four stakeholders that addresses:

  • Engagement approaches: Inform, consult, involve, collaborate, empower
  • Expectations management
  • Conflict mitigation
  • Leveraging support
  • Adaptive management

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Format

  • 12-point Times New Roman
  • Standard 1” margins • APA formatting for citations
  • Single spaced
  • 2 pages with a third page for citations as needed
  • Name on document and in file name

This assignment is assessing Competency 2:

To participate in and contribute to the policy process

  • Inform the design, implementation, and/or evaluation of policy.
  • Identify and manage stakeholder interests and expectations within existing constraints to achieve policy goals.

References you can use to complete this assignment:

  • About Flint’s water crisis: Denchak, M. (2025). “Flint water crisis: Everything you need to know”. Natural Resources Defense Council (July).

  • About stakeholder analysis:

    • Eden, C. & Ackermann, F. (1998). “Stakeholder analysis and management.” In Eden, C. & Ackermann, F. Stakeholder analysis and management (p.113-135). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing.
    • Fung, A. (2003). “Survey article: Recipes for public spheres: Eight institutional design choices and their consequences”. Journal of Political Philosophy, 11(3): 338–367.
    • Bryson, J. (2004). “What to do when stakeholders matter”. Public Management Review, 6(1): 21-53.