From the "A little less regulation, please", files: Dear President Trump: Please Make America Flush Clean Again
It should be noted that the author is incorrect about fluorescent bulbs being the only choice; LED bulbs are significantly more efficient than fluorescent, provide better quality light than either fluorescent or incandescent and have been reasonably priced for the past few years, under a dollar a bulb at Walmart for the common 60-watt replacement bulb. Replacing a 60-watt incandescent with a 9-watt LED bulb typically pays for itself in just a few months if the bulb is in use for several hours a day.
On Friday, while meeting with small business owners in the White House about “common-sense” regulatory reform, President Donald Trump told reporters that his administration is considering relaxing federal water-usage limits for toilets, sinks, and showers. “People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times as opposed to once,” the president said, adding that “they end up using more water.”
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[W]hile most Americans support conservation, they see no sense in regulations so stringent that washers don’t wash, toilets don’t flush, and dishwashers just wash, and wash, and wash, and wash. And average, everyday folks outside the beltway talk about these things with much the same hyperbole that Trump used on Friday.
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While it is difficult to imagine that the federal administrative state will succumb to consumer complaints and demands, four months ago we saw just that happen when the Energy Department nixed rules adopted under the Obama administration poised to go into effect on January 1, 2020. Those regulations would have mandated stringent rules for incandescent and halogen light bulbs, as well as all pear-shaped lightbulbs, leaving consumers with high-cost, mercury-filled florescent bulbs as the only option.
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[W]hile most Americans support conservation, they see no sense in regulations so stringent that washers don’t wash, toilets don’t flush, and dishwashers just wash, and wash, and wash, and wash. And average, everyday folks outside the beltway talk about these things with much the same hyperbole that Trump used on Friday.
...
While it is difficult to imagine that the federal administrative state will succumb to consumer complaints and demands, four months ago we saw just that happen when the Energy Department nixed rules adopted under the Obama administration poised to go into effect on January 1, 2020. Those regulations would have mandated stringent rules for incandescent and halogen light bulbs, as well as all pear-shaped lightbulbs, leaving consumers with high-cost, mercury-filled florescent bulbs as the only option.
It should be noted that the author is incorrect about fluorescent bulbs being the only choice; LED bulbs are significantly more efficient than fluorescent, provide better quality light than either fluorescent or incandescent and have been reasonably priced for the past few years, under a dollar a bulb at Walmart for the common 60-watt replacement bulb. Replacing a 60-watt incandescent with a 9-watt LED bulb typically pays for itself in just a few months if the bulb is in use for several hours a day.