Mars officials have suspected significant leaks in the local water system since early this year. They shouldn't have waited until virtually year's end to address the situation.

In addition to the amount of water lost as a result of the borough's prolonged inaction, there's the issue of delaying the corrective work until the coldest months of the year, when adverse weather conditions could produce work delays.

But at least the municipality is on the right track now, albeit late. On Monday, the borough council hired a leak-detection company to electronically analyze the situation and pinpoint the community's trouble areas.

Nevertheless, the community could have saved many millions of gallons of water if the council had been proactive about the problem.

In the February billing period, it was determined that 1.7 million gallons of water were "missing." That was the amount of water that was pumped, but not billed to customers.

According to an article in Wednesday's Butler Eagle, in the May billing period the missing water totaled 2.4 million gallons; 3.8 million gallons were missing in the August billing.

Then, between August and October, the loss was 4.6 million gallons — further evidence that the problem wasn't going to correct itself.

Howard Bohnert, maintenance director, emphasized to the council Monday that the situation did not constitute a water emergency. He said the reservoirs were full.

But even without an emergency, it would have been in the borough's best interests to deal with the issue in a more reasonable time frame, not allow the situation to worsen and possibly contribute to an emergency later.

It will be to the borough's benefit to fix the leaks as quickly as possible, as weather permits, and for borough officials to stay more on top of the water-leak situation than they have in the past.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education needs to beef up the way it handles data dealing with school violence. If state Auditor General Jack Wagner is correct, the department is falling far short in making the best use of the information.According to Wagner, the state's annual school-violence reports end up being of little value to the public and policymakers because the state neither independently verifies the reports' accuracy nor releases them in a timely enough way.An audit of the Education Department's safe schools initiatives determined that the annual reports about student misdeeds were released as late as a year after schools' deadline for submitting the data to the state."These reports are consistently late and, by the time they become public, they have very little value," Wagner said.The audit covered the period July 2001 through June 2006, but also included information from as recently as November.Apparently the latest information confirms that, while the department might have made some improvements in the handling of the data, as the department claims, there still is a need for more progress.The information is considered vital for the department's determination of whether a school should be classified "persistently dangerous" under federal law. Students in schools receiving that dubious designation are entitled to transfer elsewhere.Based on Wagner's assessment, the department isn't always treating the information as vital, and that must change.

Butler County families who depend on the services of the Butler Health System have solid grounds for optimism about its future.While some health systems in Pennsylvania and beyond are struggling amid the extremely troubled economy, the public, at the health system's annual meeting Wednesday, was provided with a positive report not only from the financial side of the hospital operation, but also from the patient services side of the ledger.Even with a major construction project under way in these difficult economic times, Butler Memorial Hospital has not stepped back from its strong focus on recruiting excellent doctors and other needed medical personnel. At the same time, it has maintained its commitment to controlling costs, helping to bolster the hospital's financial status, despite the financial considerations stemming from the current construction."We take a cautious and conservative approach when it comes to our finances, so I think we're in better shape than some other systems," said Ken DeFurio, health system president and chief executive officer.He told the board of trustees that he was proud of the progress the health system has made in the past year in all areas.Wednesday's meeting was in stark contrast to the mood of some annual meetings of recent years — prior to DeFurio's move up to his current position — when the construction project was a topic of great controversy.The people of Butler County should be proud of the hospital report presented Wednesday. At the same time, the public should remain confident of the ability of DeFurio and other top health system officials to be able to present a similarly optimistic report next December.Good things are happening at the hospital, and there's no reason to suspect that they won't continue.