Oftentimes there are little or no choices available when deciding who to do business with in Butler County.

We will start with the newspaper. The Eagle is the only daily newspaper that is sold throughout Butler County during the week. The Post -Gazette graces us with slightly more of a presence on Sunday than the only other day they print a newspaper, which is Thursday. So if you desire a printed product it is pretty much us or no one. And the amount of space allotted for the PG to cover Butler County is very minimal unless we have a shooting, stabbing or a big fire.

Armstrong is the only cable company available in most of the county so again there isn’t really a choice. The same scenario plays out for electric, natural gas, water and sewer.

But now we have an interesting twist in that Pennsylvania American Water wants to expand its dominance by adding the Butler Area Sewer Authority to its hold on Butler County residences. There is a “quiet” period in place which keeps the parties involved from talking about the good, the bad and the ugly with the possible takeover of BASA by Pennsylvania American.

Until Friday of last week we were content to sit idly by and let people with more skin in the game and more knowledge make the decision whether to sell the local authority to the outside firm. But Friday we saw an unacceptable side to the potential buyer that causes us to shudder at the idea.

While Butler residents sheltered from the cold Friday morning Pennsylvania American decided to drain select fire hydrants for some reason. One of them happened to be on Eagle Printing Company property so we felt entitled to ask why it was being done and especially why instead of pumping the water down the drains it was being pumped onto our land in the rear of the property.

It was creating a very large pond which, due to freezing temperatures, was starting to ice over. The worker involved refused us an explanation other than “I will just shut it off and I don’t care if we shut this whole neighborhood down.” That was interesting because he offered no reason at all for the “why” in the question.

So we contacted Pennsylvania American offices and spoke to a very apologetic lady who assured us that a management person would contact us shortly and tell us what was the purpose of the new pond being created on our property. Perhaps it was to be an ice skating rink for the neighborhood children or an attractive nuisance to cause insurance claims.

Three days later we are still waiting for that call from a responsible representative of their company. What did happen was they used a sump pump to remove the majority of the water by pumping it out onto Wayne Street in below-freezing temperatures and allowing it to run down the street and create dangerous icing around the parked cars and on streets.

Was there a waterline break somewhere? Did a house have frozen pipes and this was part of the remedy? Not that we know of, but then again that phone call still hasn’t happened. Based on the actions and nonaction that we witnessed firsthand from them, we have to advise the local authorities who currently control BASA against getting in deeper with Pennsylvania American. They demonstrated that they are too big to be bothered with answering to anyone about the questionable actions they were taking and made things actually worse and more dangerous.

It may be in the best interest of the community to sell BASA, but we don’t think Pennsylvania American Water has shown that it would be a trusted and accommodating neighbor. The authority needs to seek other alternatives that might be better neighbors.

— RV