Slowing Down the Flow
The Washington Times, August 23, 1997
By James V. DeLong

The Energy Policy Act of 1992 must rank as one of the more grandiose legislative acts since about 1030 A.D., when King Canute commanded the ocean waves to stop rolling in. The U.S. Congress decided to micromanage the volume of water used in shower heads and toilets all over the United States, in the name of conserving water. No shower head sold after 1994 can use more than 2.2 gallons per minute, and no toilet can use more than 1.6 gallons per flush. These are serious reductions, since a reasonably hard current shower pumps out three to four gallons per minute, and many pre-existing toilets use a luxurious 3.5 gallons per flush.

The reasoning behind the law is murky, to put it charitably, apparently resting solely on fuzzy feelings that water conservation is a good thing. But water is cheap everywhere in the U.S., even in California, which requires expensive engineering works to supply its cities, farms, and golf courses. According to a 1994 report by the state's Department of Water Resources, residential water bills on the South Coast run a little less than a dollar per 100 cubic feet, which works out to about 13/100s of a cent per gallon. This is pretty cheap for water that is supposed to be scarce, and note that the Energy Act will save water worth less than a quarter of a cent with each flush.

This is a strange way to conserve. Ninety percent of California's water goes to farmers anyway, who pay even less than the homeowners. Experts say that if the cities of the coast want more water, all that is needed is to raise the price of water for agriculture slightly and enough will flow from marginal farms to keep golf courses green and toilets flushing happily. The flow controls are an intrusive solution to a non-problem.

Objections to the law are mounting, more on esthetic than economic grounds. Consumers are complaining about the new toilets, saying they do not do the job and begging contractors to resurrect old models. People are also noticing that flushing a 1.6 gallon toilet twice uses almost as much water as flushing a 3.5 gallon toilet once, so perhaps the law is a mite pointless, and that you keep the water running longer to rinse off under a low-flow shower, again making the enterprise pointless as well as irritating. There have been reports of other problems with the new models, such as explosions, though no pictures of such a catastrophe have yet appeared. Clearly, it won't be long until organized crime moves in, shiploads of illegal commodes are landed on remote beaches, and we add the Flush Patrol to the roster of federal law enforcement agencies.

All this annoyance also costs consumers money. Information on the exact costs of the new model toilets is hard to pin down, but they are more expensive than the old ones by significant amounts. At a saving of a quarter of a cent per flush takes many years to get your investment back, if, in fact, you ever get it back. Governments, with New York City and the Feds leading the way, are taking nuttiness a step further, actually tearing out old toilets to replace them with new low-flow models. A cynic might think that the plumbing fixture makers had something to do with drafting this law, as indeed they did.

There is hope, though. In future years, those who fear the regulatory state and its seemingly indomitable expansion may celebrate Sunday, July 20, 1997, as the day the tide turned. On that day Dave Barry, one of America's most widely-read humorists, published a column mocking this law and the Congress that passed it and urging his readers to support H.R. 859, a reform bill introduced by Representative Joseph Knollenberg. Michigan Republican. An old saw goes, I care not who writes a nation's laws if I can write its songs, but this could use some updating. You can keep the songs and the laws both if you want, as long as you give me the satirists.

The cause of reform needs one more ingredient beyond economic rationality and the attention of humorists to achieve maximum power, though. It needs preachers. This law is not just inefficient and silly, it is morally wrong. By what right does Congress declare that a laborer who wants to use an extra gallon on a good hard shower cannot get it because it does not want to raise the price of the thousands of gallons used by Palm Springs golfers by a couple of mills? Or that people who find new model toilets esthetically offensive must grin and bear it? And how dare the political class be so arrogant as to pass such a law so off-handedly, with no serious inquiry into its impact? How can Congress make a search for a good shower into a conspiracy? And who gave it the right to be so utterly incompetent?

Humor is good, but it needs to be spiced with a little genuine outrage. Only then will the bathrooms of America again flow freely.

JAMES V. DeLONG

Washington