If it isn't a bluff, it's an unnecessary and expensive burden on residents.

Or maybe it's one small town's bold declaration of independence from a larger and sometimes overbearing neighbor.

Both opinions are flying as Huntertown's move to build its own sewage-treatment facility, but this much seems certain: One way or another, it should end the long-simmering stalemate with Fort Wayne utility officials that almost made Huntertown Council member John Hidy add the recession to the list of things for which he gave thanks this week.

“I guess the timing is right, because there probably wouldn't have been much development, anyway,” Hidy said, referring to Huntertown's long-running battle to increase its sewage capacity and, as a result, its ability to attract new homes, businesses and industries. As I reported more than three years ago, proposed developments in what had been among the state's fastest-growing towns had been stalled because Fort Wayne officials claimed sewers connecting Huntertown to the city's treatment plant lacked the capacity to accommodate large numbers of additional customers.

Fort Wayne has been working to increase that capacity, but when the 20-year contract between Huntertown and Fort Wayne expired last year, it provided Huntertown officials an opportunity to seize control of their own destiny. They have asked firms interested in planning and building the sewage facility to submit their qualifications by Dec. 16, and Hidy hopes to negotiate a contract early next year.

If you're not among Huntertown's 2,500 or so residents, you may be wondering why you should care about any of this. Good question. But as the nationwide tea-party movement indicates, Americans everywhere are increasingly eager to gain control of their own lives – a principle that can and should apply to governments as well. The question, as always, is one of balance: Does the benefit justify the cost?

Ted Nitza, a program manager for Fort Wayne's City Utilities, said Huntertown currently pays Fort Wayne an annual sewage bill of about $375,000, or about $22 per customer per month. A new sewage plant could cost $20 million, he estimated – debt that could add about $60 to each monthly bill.

Nitza said the city, which has been negotiating with Huntertown since 2002, remains eager to reach a new agreement and said a new plant for Huntertown would represent a reversal of a decades-long trend that has seen small towns abandon their own plants in favor of a service contract with a larger and more environmentally sound regional provider such as Fort Wayne.

But Hidy said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has supported the town's proposal, and insists the town would be able to charge rates the same or lower than Fort Wayne would charge, perhaps because property taxes, grants and other funds could subsidize the project. And there's no way of predicting future rate increases by Fort Wayne, or the cost of complying with federal mandates that would be passed along to ratepayers, he added.

Hidy also said he questions Fort Wayne's claim that it has lacked capacity in the Huntertown area because it offered to provide more capacity if the town stopped providing water for itself and instead hooked onto the city's system. “We're looking to attract new businesses and diversify our economy, but the city has pretty much put a moratorium on us,” he added. Projects already approved but not built can continue, however.

If the prospect of losing one of its biggest customers induces Fort Wayne officials to sweeten their contract offer, Hidy said, he would be willing to listen. But Hidy said he and other Huntertown officials have been displeased by the pace and lack of results. “(The city) has been dragging their feet (in negotiations),” he said.

Ironically, Huntertown's 21 percent population growth between 2000 and 2005 was caused in part by the lack of sewage capacity in Aboite Township, which caused the Allen County Plan Commission to impose a moratorium on development there from 1997 to 2002. Hidy doesn't want Huntertown's post-recession economic opportunities to be limited by officials in Fort Wayne for whom Huntertown residents cannot vote.

Fort Wayne utility officials are simply trying to protect the city's interests, and I'm not qualified to say whether Huntertown ratepayers would be better served by a new City Utilities contract or by a new hometown facility. But I do know that the desire for self-determination is both fundamentally healthy and innately American – or at least used to be.

And that's why, in this era of creeping Big Brotherism, you should care about one small northern Allen County town's desire to control its own fate – and to prove that “government” and “waste” can coexist in a way that actually makes sense.