Bolinas, Calif. - BLESSED with a quaint downtown and some of the most impressive scenery on the Pacific coast, this town is largely unknown even in San Francisco, just 20 miles south. To keep that from changing, residents have a habit of tearing down highway signs that so much as mention Bolinas.The same urge to remain pristine has led to one of the most extreme anti-growth policies in the nation. For more than 30 years, Bolinas has refused to authorize a single new water meter, needed for hooking up to the town water supply. There are now 580 meters -- the same as in November 1971, when the moratorium began.

That has made water meters the most valuable currency in town. And so late last month, a water meter was auctioned for $310,000. For that, the buyer didn't get a house, or even land on which to build a house -- just the right to hook up to the municipal water supply, which comes from the Arroyo Honda, a spring-fed creek about five miles north of town.

"It's unbelievable that someone would have to pay that kind of money just to get water -- in America," said Lorenzo Martinez, who runs a construction business in Bolinas, but said he can't afford to own a house there.

Then he added: "But if I had the money, I would have bought the meter myself. This is the place I'd like my daughter to grow up."