The county commissioners made a smart move by taking a step last week toward addressing issues of flooding that have plagued the county this past year.

Whether it will progress is dependent upon affected municipalities doing their share.

At a meeting Wednesday, the commissioners unanimously approved a measure to hire engineering firm Herbert, Rowland and Grubic to review the release rates of water in nine municipalities in the southern tier of the county and determine how rates could be adjusted to reduce flooding at the Connoquenessing and Breakneck creeks.

Additionally, the engineers would devise three projects per municipality to provide flood mitigation.

The only catch is: the nine municipalities would have to pay 80 percent of the $76,380 cost, while the county would pay 20 percent — or $15,275. Therefore, the hiring of the engineering firm would only come as the result of all nine municipalities — Adams, Cranberry, Jackson and Lancaster townships, Evans City, Harmony, Mars, Seven Fields and Zelienople boroughs — agreeing to pay their share.

Already, leaders from one of the municipalities — Harmony — have noted they will not yet make a decision on whether to take part in it.

Harmony council members can’t be faulted for calling the study portion of the project “superfluous,” noting they already know from where the water flooding their community comes.

However, Harmony’s council president, Greg Such, made a good point that the study could also discover how local flooding problems are caused by communities upstream from the borough.

And putting the study itself aside, getting multiple projects per municipality to address flooding would make the project worthwhile for all nine communities.

It’s understandable that in recent years, many municipalities in the county have tried to get more out of less with their budgets, which have become tighter.

But spending money in advance on flood prevention can save money later that would be spent on clean up and repairing damage. And as commissioner Leslie Osche pointed out, collaboration between the nine municipalities can be beneficial because a flood mitigation effort in one community can inadvertently help a neighboring municipality.

Last summer’s stormy weather was disastrous for sections of Butler County.

We believe the proposal to hire the engineering firm and come up with flood mitigation projects for the nine municipalities is a necessary dose of preventive medicine.

— NCD