Is there anything that epitomizes the nanny-state government more than the low-flow toilet?

Since being mandated in the early 1990s, the 1.6-gallon toilet has resulted in countless backed-up commodes, enriched a legion of plunger manufacturers and passed along who knows how many diseases. Well, the last two may be hyperbole, but the first is certainly true.

And all because it was believed that toilets that used 3.5 gallons of water or more per flush were wasteful.

Last year, Jeffrey Tucker of the Mises Institute detailed what the low-flow toilet hath wrought:

Indoor plumbing since the time of the ancient world has been a sign of prosperity and human well-being. Indoor toilets that flow into a sewer have been around since 1500 B.C., but every new settlement of people in a new area presents the problem anew. In rural America, indoor toilets weren’t common until the 1930s. That today everyone assumes them to be part of life is a testament to the creative power of economic progress. What we have in these regulations passed since the 1990s is therefore a step backwards from a central aspiration of mankind to dispose of human waste in the best possible way. We have here an instance of government having forced society into a lower stage of existence. Government has reduced us as people to the point that we either have to enter the black market to get good sewage or come to terms with living amidst periodic spreading of human waste all over our domestic and commercial environment. Again, this is wholly unnecessary. Capitalism achieved something spectacular in waste disposal. Government came along and took it away from us. That’s the story in a nutshell.

In San Francisco, skimping on toilet water has resulted in a bigger problem: more sludge backing up inside sewer pipes, creating a rotten-egg stench in parts of the city, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The city has already spent $100 million over the past five years to upgrade its sewer system and sewage plants, in part to combat the odor problem, the paper writes.

“Now officials are stocking up on a $14 million, three-year supply of highly concentrated sodium hypochlorite – better known as bleach – to act as an odor eater and to disinfect the city’s treated water before it’s dumped into the bay,” according to the Chronicle.

“That translates into 8.5 million pounds of bleach either being poured down city drains or into the drinking water supply every year,” the paper adds.

Some will argue low-flow toilets are a minor inconvenience to put up with for the good of the environment. However, the question remains as to how much positive they’re actually doing.

If one has to flush a toilet two or three times to accomplish what a 3.5-gallon commode did with a single flush, is this progress? If privies back up and germs are more likely to be spread, is this a step in the right direction?

As Tucker writes: “Sometimes conserving is not a good idea. There are some life activities that cry out for the expenditure of resources, even in the most generous possible way. I would count waste disposal as one of those.”