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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
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