To the rest of you, This is just another attack on low water consumption toilets. Why this is a cause celeb among Conservatives I'll never understand. Low flow toilets was and is a great benefit. While in the beginning, some manufacturers made lousy toilets, the toilets today flush better on 1.6 gpf than the 5.0 gpf or 3.5 gpf toilets of yesterday. Manufacturers have ALWAYS made some lousy toilets. I remember going on plugged toilet calls and the first thing I would look for was the brand. If it were a UR (Universal Rundle) toilet, they needed to replace the toilet. When 1.6 gpf toilets were first required, American Standard (Cadet) had a toilet redesign that they must have spent five minutes on. Unless the 1.6 device in the tank was defeated, they didn't flush solids. Even then they flushed poorly. Now, the American Standard Cadet 3 is the toilet I recommend.
Now manufacturers have finally come around to the functional design of Swedish “Ifo” toilets I bought 20 years ago from a guy who drove to Massachusetts and picked them up and delivered them to me from his Subaru station wagon. Mansfield acquired the rights to sell these toilets. They changed nothing, except the price, raising it $100. Pricing themselves out of my market. By design I'm sure.
Being a plumber for 35 years, I've flushed more toilets and more kinds of toilets than you can imagine.
Does this make me an expert? You could say that.
While I'm sure everything you said in your post is true, the reason it's a cause celeb amongst us conservatives, is that it's the Nanny State dictating what kind of toilets we can use. If indeed the lo-flo toilets are as good as advertised, then let the market prevail.
I will say that I am not a fan of low flush toilets...and I have defeated the devices in my toilets. Admittedly they are fairly bottom of the line toilets; but, they really did not work well before I did that.
Notwithstanding anyone’s opinion on low flow toilets, I think the city of SF is using the public disdain for low flows as an excuse to spend money to remedy poor sewer line design.
I’ll leave the toilet argument for another day. I will say this - the managers of our city water system are seeing budgets in the red, because people are using less water (the big deciding factor is always how much people irrigate in the summer). Their solution was to raise rates...of course that had the reverse effect, which was surprising to them. I just found it odd that the utility desperately wants to sell more water...while we are forced to install water saving devices.