This Week’s Regulatory Picture

This week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sides with President Trump on toilet flushing.

EPA

In what now seems like a lifetime ago, President Trump made news in December when, in a White House meeting on regulatory reduction, he began riffing on low-flow shower heads and toilets.

“You turn on the faucet; you don’t get any water,” said the president, according to the official meeting transcript. “They take a shower and water comes dripping out. It’s dripping out — very quietly dripping out. People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once. They end up using more water.”

It turns out EPA had already initiated a legislatively mandated review of its WaterSense program about one year earlier. The 14-year-old program is a partnership among EPA, local water agencies, product manufacturers, retailers, and professional certifying organizations to encourage the development and use of water-efficient products and practices. The program was officially authorized in America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018, which required EPA to “review and revise, if necessary” any WaterSense specifications established before 2012.

In a Federal Register notice published on April 10, EPA it would maintain current specifications rather than make them more or less stringent. In addition, EPA asked for public comment on consumer satisfaction with current WaterSense labeled products, perhaps laying the groundwork to lower the specifications in the future.

TOTAL BURDENS

Since January 1, the federal government has published $7.8 billion in total net costs (with $4.8 billion in finalized costs) and 16.8 million hours of net annual paperwork burden increases (with 2.3 million hours due to final rules). Click here for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.

Disclaimer

https://www.americanactionforum.org/week-in-regulation/significant-coronavirus-rules-start-to-appear/#ixzz6JdiQqnuH
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