THE SCRAPBOOK hopes to be the first media outlet to write about the following issue without cutesy puns, double entendres, or cheap scatological allusions.
For the issue is important, and credit goes to Congressman Joe Knollenberg of Michigan for bringing it to Washington's attention. Many other Americans already know about it -- particularly anyone who has redesigned a bathroom, bought a new house, or replaced an old toilet in the last several years. The 1992 Energy Policy and Conservation Act mandated that all flush toilets, in all 50 states, would henceforth be restricted to a waterflow of 1.6 gallons per flush. Most previous toilets operated at 3.5 gallons, and consumers quickly discovered that the new standard is not enough, as some have delicately put it, to get the job done. Less delicately: The new toilets don't work. You have to keep flushing and flushing, plunging and plunging. A black market in the old, hardier toilets has developed, even though anyone caught installing one faces a $ 2,500 fine.
Knollenberg has proposed the Plumbing Standards Improvement Act, now in committee, to undo the ludicrous 1992 mandate. Strangely enough, what appears to be an egregious example of federal busybodyism is in fact an instance of another Washington pastime: special interest pandering. The tighter standard was initially requested by the Plumbing Manufacturers Institute, which wanted a uniform, nationwide standard to make life easier for its big, national manufacturers -- and if the standard required the manufacture of lots of new commodes, so much the better. Environmentalists soon made common cause, believing (incorrectly) that the new standard would conserve water. Environmental extremists and plumbers: That's some coalition.
But opposition coalitions are possible, too. After all, this is an issue at once social and economic; the Knollenberg bill thus unites traditionalist conservatives with libertarians. Touching on the most personal issues of what one does with one's body, it should also bring pro-choicers into the big tent.
You will notice that we have not advised the Republican Congress to stand up like a man, not take this sitting down, flush the bill out of committee, let it pass, tell the plumbers to pipe down, and wipe this inane regulation off the books. Such vulgar wordplay would trivialize a winning issue. But our point should be clear. This could be the beginning of a great movement.