PORT ANGELES — Add potential water rationing to the list of hot-button issues simmering in the outskirts east of the city.
Anti-annexation signs are again popping up near homes and businesses almost as fast as this year’s Scotch broom crop.
Now, conservation measures to reduce water consumption could become a reality if the city shuts off water to the Clallam County Public Utility District.
And this has raised the hackles of many east-side customers already wondering about the city’s next move.
The PUD and city are embroiled in a wholesale water-contract standoff that could result in the city cutting water to the utility district, reducing supply to thousands of consumers east of Port Angeles.
The issue is the city’s demand that new water customers or those upgrading service in the area outside the east city limit must sign an agreement not to contest annexation at some undesignated time in the future.
The agreement would go into effect once a sewer line is installed along the U.S. Highway 101 commercial strip, which economic development supporters have pegged as Clallam County’s No. 1 priority.
Hitting home
Potential water-rationing has home and business owners concerned, those interviewed said Wednesday.
“So your going to make Port Angeles beautiful and plant flowers?
“Well, duh!” said retired bus driver Ann Luke, standing in her well-kept, well-watered backyard vegetable patch on Farrel Place at Mount Pleasant Road.
Luke, miffed by the city’s threat to shut off water to the PUD, remarked that even if she could afford more property, “they wouldn’t let me water it.”
“If I had know they would put rationing on, I wouldn’t have planted all this,” said Luke, who has lived in the area 28 years.
“It looks like the city fathers are going to annex, whether we like it or not.”
