When you buy on the cheap, sometimes it costs more in the end. The Adams County supervisors are learning that — fortunately — as they assess the county’s long-time use of a federal funding program.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service has long supplied 75 percent of the funds necessary for Emergency Watershed Protection projects.

Projects that qualify are supposed to be of imminent hazard to life or property caused by natural issues such as floods, fires or storms.

The program provides federal relief dollars to cover projects that otherwise might go untended.

The problem, as county supervisors have discovered, is that often the lowest bidder gets the project or the project is made to fit into a smaller-than-adequate budget.

The result is that all too often the EWP repairs need to be re-repaired in short order.

Basically, often the quick repairs only provide short-term relief.

Supervisors are wise to observe this and would be even wiser if they led a quick study of such projects both in Adams County and in nearby counties. That information may be helpful to the federal authorities — particularly our congressional delegation — as they determine how best to improve the program going forward.

Simply spending the funds because they’re there is not necessarily a wise investment, as the county’s early assessments have proven.

Going forward, and until the program can be improved to make such investments more certain and sound, careful consideration must be given in the use of these funds to ensure the investment is not wasted.