Sharon Lee Davies-Tight 12.28.2020
After Trump’s toilet rant, efficiency standards rolled back on showers, laundry machines
MyComment: I am in full support of rolling back water efficiency standards. Those who wrote this article either do not live in the USA or they don’t bathe, cook, clean or launder on a regular basis.
Since when do we have a water shortage in the USA? With global warming where the icecaps are melting, we have a global water shortage?
To whose benefit? The water companies who want customers to use less at higher prices?
A couple years ago in the senior residence where I live, suddenly the water pressure dropped, then the hot water became lukewarm. I had no hot water to wash greasy dishes, no hot water to shower with, no hot water for clothes in the washing machines. I’d set the machine on hot water, paid extra for it and only cold came out.
This was in the middle of a bedbug pandemic. While tenants were being told to wash everything more often and with very hot water, especially fabric, which means laundry, since heat kills the bugs where they hide, the water companies were coming out to apartment buildings and lowering both the pressure and the temperature.
We pay for water and we pay for heated water, yet the water companies just on their own made this decision to enter the building after hours to make these adjustments – unbeknownst to anybody.
I complained and argued and the manager even sent a guy from the water company up to my apartment to tell me no changes were made and gave me some convoluted story about how long it takes water to reach the laundry machines and become hot. He lied right to my face, thinking I was old and my views and concerns didn’t matter.
About six months later, the manager called and apologized saying I was right after she found out the truth of what they were doing after hours.
Now I’m wondering who has that kind of access to our water supply, when they don’t even have to tell management what they’re doing? What else are they doing with it? Putting additives in it that kill the corona virus? Who knows? Is it safe to drink? See what happens when you lie and do things secretly behind people’s backs? Too many more questions arise that need answers. No we do not trust you with our water.
Not long after that, people from the electrical company came out and changed everybody’s lightbulbs. I already had energy savers – for years now, but that didn’t matter to them. The directive was to change them all, energy efficient or not. Now that wasn’t very efficient, especially in light of the fact that it was not a give-away. The costs were being applied to everybody’s electric bill – a purchase they did not request. Is that even legal? If it is, then why?
Not long after that, all shower heads and faucet filters were changed in an effort to conserve water in addition to lowering pressure. I wondered if they did this in private homes or just in apartment buildings. If not, then why not? Why not treat all people the same? People in homes don’t use much water?
But they overreached with the conservation. Conservation is not a reason; it’s a method. People need to know why and not a long term hundred years hence what the planet will look like type of explanation – all built on conjecture by the way.
Firstly, they didn’t tell people why they had to use less water. All the experts are saying the waters are rising everywhere due to global warming and that in a few thousand or so years the land masses could all be under water.
Then they put in the new lease a requirement that National Church Residences be allowed to view everybody’s water usage, which previously they didn’t have access to. If you said no, then you had three months to vacate.
When I asked why they wanted the access, the manager claimed that when some people go on vacation or go into the hospital they leave the tub faucet on a trickle so the cats can have water. They want to identify those people by the usage. Do you believe that? The people who had to leave their cats alone could just as easily put filled water dishes all over the apartment – like they do with the food. How did management even know that people were doing that prior to requiring everybody to give them access to their water usage?
Secondly, they designed the filters so that the water came out way too slow. So what did people do? They removed them when they wanted water quickly, so they could get the pressure they needed to work more efficiently. Had they not reached so far with the design and not cut the output so drastically, people would have kept them on. They went too far. They always do.
What do they think, people in public housing don’t have jobs, so they don’t have to take showers, or wash their clothes properly? Now we’re in a pandemic with all the experts telling the populace over and over again to keep washing your hands, clean, clean, clean, soap and water is the best disinfectant. And now, lo and behold in the middle of this pandemic they cut the pressure even more.
We couldn’t buy alcohol, because there evidently weren’t any factories in the USA that made it, and then they essentially turned off the water that put us all at an extreme health risk. If you want to know where these conspiracies come from ask the likes of Joe Biden who has promised as his first order of business upon taking the oath of office as president to cut off the water supply again, willy nilly, so no one can plan their day or evening.
Maybe the next corona spike should be blamed on water rationing during a pandemic. Who to blame. The cats? How stupid when there was no water shortage. Pandemics don’t cause water shortages. You tell people to clean, they clean, then you cut their water supply. How stupid.
Just recently a couple of months before this article was published, the pressure was cut drastically almost like a collective punishment measure targeting people in public housing. Was I ever shocked that those extreme measures were also noted by the President of the United States. And Joe Biden’s knee-jerk response to Trump’s action to waive the water efficiency rules was to reinstate them to get back at Trump, when Biden didn’t know the first thing about it. Biden should have said, hey, I noticed that too, what’s it gonna take for an old guy to get a shower around here?.
What?? Does Joe Biden shower? You mean he didn’t participate in the water efficiency program? Why not?? Nancy Pelosi didn’t either? You might have thought that they would tell the American people about the severe water shortage and the measures we all have to take to make the water companies more money while we consume less. Guess that wouldn’t have gone over very well, politically speaking.
The inconsiderate part is that the lowering of the pressure is random, so Steve (or anybody else in the building) never knows in the morning if he can take a shower. Some days it’s a trickle, other days it’s normal. We can’t plan around the water pressure being low. Who is making these rules and why? Why the random action? All these rich people in congress who supposedly take showers and Donald Trump was the only one who spoke up about it?
Why if such extreme measures were being taken due to a water shortage wasn’t it all over the news 24/7 when the rationing started a couple years ago?
RE: Toilets. Low water pressure affects toilet- flushing. It takes a long time for the toilet to flush, then the toilet runs a long time. So it’s counterproductive to the desired result of conserving water.
Turn the damn water on and turn up the heat. Nobody is burning themselves. The cats aren’t causing a water shortage.
ARTICLE:
Allan Smith
Wed, December 16, 2020, 7:06 PM EST
In one of its closing acts, the Trump administration this week finalized two new rules rolling back water efficiency standards on showerheads and laundry machines.
It’s the latest move in line with the president’s yearlong crusade against what he deems as insufficient water pressure in household appliances and bathroom fixtures.
The new showerhead rule, which the Energy Department announced on Tuesday, allows for each showerhead in a fixture to reach the two-and-a-half gallon-per-minute maximum water flow rate mandated by Congress, which set those standards nearly 30 years ago. Previously, a showerhead fixture could only use two-and-a-half gallons per minute regardless of how many showerheads were on it, with the total usage collected cumulatively.
In its second rule, the department also created new product classes for washers and dryers with shorter cycle times. That followed the agency’s October announcement of a new rule allowing for a new class of dishwashers with shorter cycle times and different efficiency standards.
“Today the Trump Administration affirmed its commitment to reducing regulatory burdens and safeguarding consumer choice,” Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said in a statement. “With these rule changes, Americans can choose products that are best suited to meet their individual needs and the needs of their families.”
Some environmental advocates, consumer groups and manufacturers criticized the recent rule changes as both unnecessary and potentially harmful to the environment.
“Changing the rules to address one of President Trump’s pet peeves is simply silly,” Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, said in a statement. “Thousands of showerhead models on the market today meet the standards that Congress set way back in 1992 and provide a great shower.”
Joanna Mauer, a senior research manager at the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, wrote that the new laundry rule will allow “certain clothes washers and dryers to use unlimited amounts of energy and water” and “will open the door to very wasteful products.”
“Notably, no one asked for this rule,” she added, saying President-elect Joe Biden’s administration “should move to quickly reverse both today’s rule and the dishwasher short-cycle rule.”
SHARON ON THE NEWS™ 