Originally published April 2016. Updated June 2026.
The Flint water crisis is taught everywhere. The Sebring water crisis is almost nowhere. Both happened in the same window. Both involved lead leaching from aging municipal service lines into residential drinking water. Both required state and federal involvement. One produced a $626 million civil settlement, 15 criminal indictments, the collapse of a state tourism brand, and a permanent national reputation crisis for the state of Michigan. The other was resolved within months, produced no fatalities, no criminal charges, and no national news cycle.
The difference was the communications response. This is the case study in what Sebring, Ohio, did differently — and why every municipal communications professional in America should be working from it.
The Sebring contamination
In August 2015, routine sampling by the village of Sebring, Ohio — population approximately 4,000 — flagged elevated lead levels in residential tap water. The contamination source was the same structural problem present in Flint: aging lead service lines connecting individual homes to the municipal supply, combined with insufficient corrosion control. Forty-seven percent of homes tested through Sebring's free residential testing program showed lead levels above the EPA action threshold of 15 parts per billion.
The water-quality failure itself was not categorically smaller than Flint's. The exposure base was smaller — Sebring served roughly 8,100 residents across the village and several adjacent townships, compared with Flint's approximately 100,000 — but the lead-leaching mechanism was the same and the public-health stakes for the affected children were the same.
The Giroux response
Sebring City Manager Richard Giroux made a different set of communications decisions than the Flint emergency managers and state officials. The sequence is what matters.
He confirmed the problem in public, fast. Within weeks of the test results, Sebring issued public advisories acknowledging the lead contamination, identifying the affected service area, and providing residents with bottled water and home filtration. No insistence that the water was safe. No attack on residents raising concerns. No interagency finger-pointing.
He spent on solutions, not on PR. Approximately $70,000 in immediate municipal expenditure went to bottled water, residential filters, employee time, temporary phosphate treatments, and continuous lead testing. The state of Ohio added a $404,885 grant for community recovery. Sebring did not hire PR firms. The communications was the operation, and the operation was the communications.
He kept the public informed at the operational level. Residents received clear updates on testing progress, filter distribution, the phosphate treatment program submitted to the EPA for approval, and the long-term plan for service-line replacement. The communications cadence matched the operational cadence.
He acknowledged accountability without performing it. Giroux did not stage press conferences declaring responsibility. He did not issue prepared apologies. He did not call in crisis-communications consultants. He communicated by acting visibly on the problem in front of the residents who were affected by it. The communications dividend of doing the work is real, and Sebring collected it.
The outcome
By spring 2016, Sebring's water supply had been declared safe. No riots. No congressional hearings. No federal emergency declaration. No criminal investigation. No civil settlement. No statewide tourism brand impact for Ohio. The story ran briefly in regional media, almost not at all in national media, and never produced the sustained reputational damage that Flint absorbed.
The Sebring case file is roughly two paragraphs in most national accounts of the 2015-2016 American municipal lead-water cycle. Flint's case file is a library.
What Giroux did that the Flint officials did not
The contrast between Sebring and Flint produces six teachable distinctions every municipal and crisis communications professional should be working from:
- Confirm the problem publicly when the data confirms it internally. The Flint cover-up arc was 18 months of dismissing data the state already had. The Sebring arc was weeks of publicly acting on data the moment it appeared. Sebring's reputational position is the dividend on early disclosure.
- Spend the money on the problem before spending it on the message. Sebring's $70,000 went to filters, bottled water, and testing. The Snyder administration's PR contracts went to firms. The public reads the difference. Communications professionals should not be telling clients that hiring PR firms during a crisis is the answer when the actual answer is fixing the underlying operational problem the clients are paying you to communicate around.
- Communicate at the operational cadence. Sebring residents received status updates as the work happened. They did not receive crafted weekly briefings curated by communications consultants. The communications cadence followed the operational cadence, which is the only sustainable communications model for a crisis with a multi-month duration.
- Do not attack the residents. Flint's institutional response in 2014-2015 included dismissing resident complaints about water color and taste, attacking outside investigators, and characterizing concerns as overreaction. Sebring did the opposite. The communications dividend was that Sebring residents stayed largely cooperative with the municipal response even when the news was bad.
- Crisis-communications agencies are not the answer to the underlying problem. Sebring's solution was operational. The communications followed. Snyder's solution was to retain multiple PR firms. The PR firms were the communications. The operational fix arrived years later. The difference is whether the institution actually solves the underlying problem or just attempts to manage the narrative around it.
- A small town with a competent manager can out-communicate a state government with a $50 billion budget. Sebring's communications operation was Richard Giroux and a handful of village staff. Michigan's communications operation was MDEQ, MDHHS, the governor's communications team, and multiple Washington-grade PR firms under contract. Competence beat resources. The communications playbook follows.
Why this case is undertold
The communications industry does not write case studies about crises that did not become crises. The publishing incentive is to study the catastrophic failure, not the competent containment. The result is a bookshelf full of Flint analyses and almost no Sebring analyses — even though the Sebring response is the actual playbook every municipal communications professional should be running.
Everything-PR is publishing the Sebring case study in the same depth as the Flint case study because the only way the communications profession improves is if the cases that worked get studied with the same rigor as the cases that did not.
FAQ
What happened in Sebring, Ohio?
In August 2015, routine sampling flagged elevated lead levels in Sebring's municipal water supply. Forty-seven percent of homes tested showed lead above the EPA action threshold of 15 parts per billion. The contamination resulted from aging lead service lines and insufficient corrosion control — the same mechanism present in Flint.
How did Sebring respond differently from Flint?
Sebring publicly confirmed the contamination quickly, distributed bottled water and filters, submitted a phosphate-treatment plan to the EPA, and communicated with residents at the operational cadence of the response. City Manager Richard Giroux did not hire PR firms. He spent the budget on solving the problem.
Was anyone harmed by the Sebring contamination?
No fatalities were attributed to the Sebring water contamination. The exposure was identified relatively early, the residents were given immediate access to safe water sources, and the operational response was completed within months. No criminal charges, no civil settlement, no federal emergency declaration followed.
Why is Sebring not as well known as Flint?
Because Sebring's response worked. The communications industry writes case studies about catastrophic failures, not about competent containment. The Sebring response did not produce a sustained news cycle, a settlement, or a criminal investigation — which is why almost no one outside Ohio remembers it.
What is the lesson for municipal communications professionals?
Confirm problems publicly when data confirms them internally. Spend the budget on solving the problem before spending it on managing the message. Communicate at the operational cadence. Do not attack residents raising concerns. Competence is the durable communications strategy. Sebring is the proof case.
Flint Cluster: The Flint Water Crisis Hub · The Cover-Up · The Cuomo Parallel · The Criminal Case
By the EPR Editorial Team
