Back-to-back events last week show the games Hillsborough County is playing with the region's drinking water. On Tuesday, an arbitration panel ruled that unfounded fear and suspicion were not reason enough for the county to block a much-needed reservoir southeast of Tampa. Yet the following day, the county used the same tools -- fear and suspicion -- to oppose a seawater desalination plant in southern Hillsborough. Desal is another critical means of boosting the water supply. The challenges to the desal plant, like those to the reservoir, lack substance and resemble an old tactic for critics who can't dispute the facts. Throw enough mud, and something will stick.

The arbitrators' ruling was encouraging, but the sense of relief is counterbalanced by the ongoing obstructionism in Hillsborough. It's as if the county wants to hand a defeat to Tampa Bay Water, the regional supply utility, as payback for placing the major new projects in Hillsborough. In part, the attacks are routine parochialism. Why impose tighter watering restrictions or rein in growth when county commissioners in Hillsborough can blame the condos in Pinellas or the farmers in Pasco?

But the legal maneuvering, which costs time and money, has broader drawbacks. If the Hillsborough commission had been this parochial a few years ago, Tampa Bay Water, a three-county cooperative, never could have been formed in the first place. It's getting hard to keep the working relationship together. Even the city of Tampa will, this week, formally join hands with Tampa Bay Water and the regulatory agencies to oppose Hillsborough's challenge to the desal plant. The county cannot even win support on its side of Tampa Bay.

Hillsborough has replaced Pinellas as the troublesome neighbor fanning the region's water wars' fire. Commissioner Chris Hart has recently taken a more reasonable tone on policy matters. But his fellow Hillsborough appointee to the board, Commissioner Ronda Storms, seems convinced of a conspiracy to steal Tampa's water, pollute the bay and leave Hillsborough vulnerable to the risks and costs of a catastrophic cleanup.

Storms wants the developer or Tampa Bay Water to underwrite blanket insurance in the event the plant damages the bay. She seeks an extreme guarantee that may be difficult if not impossible to obtain. No government -- hers included -- makes such a requirement of other operations that pose similar environmental risks. Tampa City Council Chairman Charlie Miranda, his government's appointee to the water board, said the county's problem is not disagreeing, but "how disagreements are put on the table." He is right. The Hillsborough commission treats Tampa Bay Water with the same disrespect it shows its own staff.

Term limits and the staggered elections of representatives to its board mean that Tampa Bay Water will always be sensitive to political change in its member counties. The utility cannot divorce itself from the ongoing power struggles playing out in Hillsborough's Republican Party, Tampa's mayoral race and next year's county elections. The best members can do is work to resolve Hillsborough's legitimate concerns and not forget why Tampa Bay Water was formed. There still is strong support in Hillsborough for regional cooperation among those who understand what could happen to conservation and growth by inflaming old antagonisms.

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