Biden administration reverses Trump-era rule increasing shower flow limits

Dec. 16 (UPI) -- President Joe Biden's administration has reversed a Trump-era rule that loosened restrictions on showerhead flow.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Energy announced in a pre-publication notice in the Federal Register, it has finalized a rule to reinstate Obama-era conservation limits for showerheads with multiple nozzles. The reinstatement reverses the Trump-era rule, which allowed water flow up to two to three times the previous limit.

Since 1994, federal standards have mandated that showerheads manufactured and sold in the United States use no more than 2.5 gallons per minute. In 2013, when Biden was vice president under Barack Obama, the administration updated the 1994 regulations to ensure the same limit applied to the entire fixture for shower fixtures with more than one nozzle.

"This was a silly loophole from the beginning, and the department was right to fix it," Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, an energy conservation advocacy group, told The Washington Post. "The good news is there was no clamoring for products that took advantage of this, and we can put this whole episode in the past."

Last year, then-President Donald Trump announced at a White House event the rollback of conservation regulations, including the Obama-era showerhead flow conservation restrictions for showers with multiple nozzles, while emphasizing the need for his hair "to be perfect."

"You take a shower, the water doesn't come out," Trump said at the event. "You want to wash your hands, the water doesn't come out. So what do you do? You just stand there longer or you take a shower longer? Because my hair--I don't know about you, but it has to be perfect."

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a nonprofit think tank and advocate for the free market movement, according to its website, criticized the reversal of the Trump-era rule in a statement.

"Consumers should be able to decide for themselves what kind of showers they buy and use, and do so free from regulatory constraints," the CEI senior fellow Ben Lieberman said in a statement. "People don't need the government to protect them from too much water in the shower, they can simply turn the knob down."