This has not been a great week for news in Washington, so it is time for fearless, muck-raking, investigative reporting. Time, in other words, to dig out HR 859.
This is the Plumbing Standards Improvement Act introduced into the House of Representatives by Congressman Joe Knollenberg, who represents that heartland of America known as Bloomfield Township, Illinois. Readers should now be warned that what follows is not for delicate natures; but it might some day happen in Ireland, which tends to follow America.
First a little history. In 1992 the US was going through an energy crisis, although no one now remembers it. Congress passed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act which decreed that all future toilets must use 1.6 gallons of water per flush instead of the trusty 3.5-gallon model.
The idea was good. Each time you went to the loo, you would use half as much valuable water as before. But the technocrats got it badly wrong.
As Mr Knollenberg delicately puts it, these restrictions "have resulted in products which do not perform nearly as well as their pre-restriction counterparts". Limits were also put on new shower-heads so that they were restricted to 2.5 gallons a minute.
The congressman had picked up on a column in a Maryland newspaper by Jim Rooney, a building inspector who also writes on home matters. He had been getting lots of mail on the subject.
A typical letter from a reader who had to replace a cracked toilet with the new model went: "I can't see the point of saving water when you have to flush several times very often. And sometimes even then you end up with the job of plunging." Ugh.
Mr Knollenberg had also been hearing similar complaints and the Rooney column showed him this was a serious problem. People all over America who had to re place old toilets were hunting around for the 3.5 gallon-job instead of the new-fangled ones.
As Mr Knollenberg points out, "although the law provides for fines as high as $2,500 for wilful procurement of pre-restriction commodes, black markets for them have developed across the country because of their more effective flushing capabilities".
Soon radio shows and columnists had launched a great debate on the flushing problem. Plumbers told of how they were being pestered by customers looking for the illegal old models.
Columnist Dave Barry took up the cause and wrote about the embarrassment of being a guest in new houses "because if you need to use the toilet, you then have to lurk in the bathroom for what seems (to you) like several presidential administrations, flushing, checking, waiting, flushing, checking, while the other guests are whispering: `What is [your name] doing in there? The laundry?"'
Readers of the Washington Post drew the newspaper's attention to the fact that the Department of Energy, which enforces the lowflush law, recently had to close several men's rooms in a government building because over-pressurised air in the pipes was "causing urinals to explode". Mr Barry wrote with Swiftian indignation: "These people are operating the Urinals of Death, and they're threatening to fine us if we procure working toilets."
Mr Knollenberg has begun getting mail on toilet paper, some, disgracefully, with President Clinton's head on it, saying: "Get the government out of my toilet." Another woman from Livonia, Michigan, thanked the congressman for HR 859 and added: "I hope it passes."
The congressman's Director of Communications, Frank Maisano, who tries to reply to all letters, says "We're delighted that people are hearing our message . . . There is real outrage at the grassroots level about this. People are upset their toilets aren't working."
Headline writers have been having a ball. An editorial, no less, in the Daily Tribune, Royal Oak, Michigan, was headed: "Toilet-type mandates should be flushed from the code books."
It commended Mr Knollenberg for insisting that "the federal government has no place in our bath rooms". The editorial conceded that "Perhaps the low-flush toilets should remain ordained in desert states [of the US] but not in wetter states like our own."
However, the Plumbing Manufacturers' Institute, which lobbied for the new national standard, opposes any return to allowing localities decide their own. "We're on the edge of technology [with 1.6 gallons] with the conventional gravity flush. We can't go lower."
One loophole in the law is about to be closed. Commercial toilets can continue to be made the old size up to January, but must be in plain white, thwarting those who like fancy colours such as rasp berry, Mexican sand and burgundy.
On those pleasing colours, it is time to end this raking of national muck. But don't let America lead the world on low-flush.