This is an opinion column.

Portrait of an enterprise, a utility, if you will. An entity charged with quenching the masses that finds itself at a precarious crossroad.

It is the prize in a tug-of-war between those who love (and chastise) it like family and those who lust for it. One of them will win and own a precious and prosperous jewel. The other will grieve its loss and forever wonder why.

Until then, the enterprise languishes at the intersection of a wasted yesterday and a tenuous tomorrow — in a place we call the Water Works Zone.

Rod Serling was my guy. You might have to be of a certain age to know him. Or of a certain twisted taste in TV shows.

He was the eloquent creator and host of what remains one of my favorites: The Twilight Zone. His introductions to the tale and twist of each episode were literary art, poetic genius in less than 100 words.

He’s one of the reasons I chose to write, to use words to engage, inform and empower.

To describe the indescribable. To chronicle the absurd.

To induce a laugh. A salient thought.

Cue the Zone theme music.

We’re in liquid limbo. The largest water utility in the state is currently governed by, well, who knows? Who owns it? Your guess is as solid as your meter reader’s.

As seen in previous episodes (sorry, no “Skip Recap” button here) the 140-year-old entity — whose tortuous history merits its own Zone — is in the process of being sold to the city of Birmingham for a buck.

Or maybe not. It’s not spring-water-clear if the sale is legit because it’s not clear that the nine-member board that on Wednesday evening voted 5-2 to approve the sale was legit.

Plot twist: Two members were absent, most curiously Vice Chair and Shelby County appointee “Butch” Burbage. State Sen. Dan Roberts, who represents portions of the county, was chief architect of SB 330, which Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law earlier on Wednesday. Just sayin’.

With Ivey’s sig, the terms of those board members expired, and a new regional board was created, transferring the majority of power to the suburbs where a minority of water customers reside in its five-county service area.

So…yeah…who knows if the $1.6 billion entity will ultimately be owned and controlled by Birmingham or governed by a board mostly planted by Republican pilferers who would finally claim what they’ve coveted and schemed for decades to obtain.

There’s enough blame for how we got here to fill the 1,000-acre Lake Purdy reservoir.

As city and county officials, the oft-fiddling and dysfunctional water board, and frustrated customers (me included) clawed at each other, Republicans plotted to pick the pocket of the valuable asset.

This year, Republican lawmakers waited until near the 11th hour to drop the bill. Then they whisked it through the Senate and House, undaunted by their spurious justifications, and impervious to any logical and legitimate arguments against a blatant suburban takeover.

Like a petulant toddler, they stood, pouted and screamed “Gimme! Gimme! Gimmie!” until their party’s super-majority handed them what they wanted.

No one, however, should have been surprised.

Democrats in the Senate and House should not have been surprised. The mayor and city council should not have been surprised. The water board should not have been surprised.

So where was their plan to at least attempt to thwart the takeover? Where was their preparedness for a scheme Republicans had tried before and would inevitably regurgitate?

A strategic, cooperative break-glass-when response should have long been drawn up, ready to be deployed as soon as the bill was dropped on April 17, not-so-slyly near the end of a calamitous session.

Instead, folks scrambled, furiously and sometimes clumsily tripping over themselves.

As Jefferson County Democrats were steamrolled (Senate Dems mysteriously went ghost after negotiating a few changes in the original bill), city hall was largely mute until the bill passed and was sent to the governor.

A group of folks finally conceived a plan at a clandestine gathering held at the (I’ll resist right here) zoo: sue er’body and sell the water works assets to the city for $1. The move, if it worked, would make the water works a city department (again) instead of an independent entity and circumvent the takeover.

Stupefyingly, they failed to pull it off.

Not long after the mayor and city council announced last Tuesday they were suing the governor and state seeking to nullify the new law, the council approved the proposal to acquire the water works at its special-called meeting. The water board was expected to approve the proposal later that day at its own special-called meeting but mysteriously did not.

Instead, the board approved the purchase agreement the following day at another special-called meeting. By then, however Ivey had already John Hancock’d the bill into law, unleashing a flood of questions about the validity of their vote.

No matter the reason for the delay, the crack in the pipeline would have been less likely had there been a plan.

Had the parties gathered before the start of the legislative session and crafted a counter to a possible (probable) attack.

Had they included it in their legislative agenda tucked behind that emergency glass.

Had they played chess (like Republicans did), not Uno.

Uncertainty now clogs the water works’ fate.

The board’s next scheduled meeting is Wednesday. It could be crowded.

If the nine members whose terms expired defiantly come (check that: eight, Burbage most likely will not attend, for the same reason he did not attend the meeting where the purchase agreement was approved), they’ll almost certainly be joined by new appointees. So far, those are Bill Morris of St. Clair County, who was appointed by Lt. Governor Will Ainsworth, and Phillip R. Wiedmeyer, appointed by Jefferson County Commission President Jimmie Stephens.

Wiedmeyer filed a federal lawsuit in response to Birmingham’s lawsuit against Ivey and the state, asking the court to nullify any action taken by the previous water board after May 7, the day Ivey signed the bill.

On Thursday, a hearing will be in federal court regarding Birmingham’s lawsuit. Last week, Chief U.S. District Judge Emily C. Marks denied the city’s emergency motion for a temporary order preventing the governor from signing the bill. But the judge set a hearing for May 15 in Montgomery on the request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction.

Thus, here we are in limbo, watching the slow, steady drip of inevitability.

Cue Serling …

Unlock this door with the keys of imagination and absurdity. Beyond it is another dimension, a dimension of regret, a dimension of greed. We’re in a land of both shadow and the unsavory, of things likely unnecessarily yet inevitably lost.

We’ve crossed over into — and are stuck in — the Water Works Zone.

Let’s be better tomorrow than we are today. My column appears on AL.com, and digital editions of The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times, and Mobile Press-Register. Tell me what you think at [email protected], and follow me at twitter.com/roysj, Instagram @roysj and BlueSky.