If you look carefully, you can see the smallest signs of economic life in Southwest County. While far from healthy, the housing market appears to have a pulse, the unemployment rate is leveling off and we are heading into the busy retail season.

But Monday morning, the water district that serves most of Temecula, Murrieta and outlying areas will consider stomping on that minuscule growth.

How? By possibly voting to stop issuing water permits for new residential and commercial construction.

It's hard to imagine a potentially more damaging step the Rancho California Water District could take right now, when the recovery is still at such a fragile stage.

In the narrowest of views, we can see how such a step might make sense.

After all, residents are being asked to cut their use dramatically and will soon pay higher bills if they don't. How can it make sense to allow the construction of new homes and businesses that will absorb what is conserved?

But the narrow view, by definition, misses the big picture. And that is that growth is essential to a robust economy.

It's all too clear what the ramifications of no growth are; we have just experienced nearly two years of it.

Yet, this agency is considering a step that could effectively plunge us right back into the darkness we are only now beginning to fight our way through.

Director John Hoagland, who made the suggestion, is looking at things solely from the perspective of water availability, and doesn't appear to be considering the effect that suspending permits would have on the economy.

"I don't consider this a moratorium," Hoagland told The Californian last week. "I consider this a pause to encourage the Legislature to solve this problem so that we can see where we are going."

If we wait for the Legislature to solve our problem, we might as well put a giant "Closed for Business" sign on the state, pack up the SUVs and head for Oklahoma.

Rancho Water needs to work on finding more water to fuel the local recovery, not ways to shut it down by turning off the tap.