In 1992, Congress voted to make their lives worse — and yours. They didn’t think you’d notice, and if you did, they thought you’d agree. Maybe you do. Either way, the congressionally mandated low-flow shower affects every American by setting a ceiling on a core human experience, and after three decades, many no longer even realize what they’re missing. But sometimes it becomes impossible to ignore — like when Kylie Jenner built a $35 million Los Angeles mansion only to wind up with a depressing trickle in her otherwise opulent shower.

The good news is: we can have satisfying showers again. We can even build innovative tech that alleviates the need for outdated water conservation schemes. All it’ll take is overturning one silly little law.

Origins of the low-flow shower

The Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPAct) enshrined a sweeping federal intrusion into energy policy, setting new targets, standards, and mandates on everything from oil and renewables to household electricity — and it passed on a near unanimous basis. Buried in 358 pages of major reforms, a relatively trivial restriction on showerheads, toilets, and faucets went largely unnoticed. Yet the policy choice was clear: in an effort to conserve water, Congress restricted showerhead flow rates to 2.5 gallons per minute (gpm), a minimum 37.5% reduction from the unregulated industry standard that previously ranged between 4 and 10 gpm.

In the three years prior to the EPAct, drought-conscious cities and states had begun implementing their own water efficiency standards, but in many cases flow rates were not regulated at all. The government claimed to have stepped in to prevent conflicting standards (a compliance nightmare for manufacturers) but it conveniently settled on the most restrictive figure. Under the new rule, the Department of Energy could fine manufacturers for each illegal showerhead, and the industry fell in line, largely without a fight.

The initial designs were awful, with enough notoriety to inspire a Seinfeld episode where Kramer seeks to replace his new low-flow showerhead with one designed for elephants. Since then, manufacturers have filled a bag of tricks to fake high flow rates: improved aeration, complex spray patterns, pressure chambers, and even internal turbines. If you think your shower doesn’t totally suck, it’s probably due to one of these innovations.

Yet on both a scientific and spiritual level, these techniques cannot replace the real thing. Newton’s Second Law: Force = Mass x Acceleration — restricting water flow effectively restricts mass. With less mass flowing through the showerhead, innovative showers have to compensate with acceleration by building more pressure. The result is high-pressure, but much smaller-mass droplets hitting you — and the needly sensation on your skin that will never replicate the heavy, kneading droplets of a high-flow shower.

And so a ceiling was set on the human experience. Blame the patriarchy, if you will, for forcing women to spend ages washing the soap out of their hair. Or maybe it’s all a government conspiracy; who needs a good shower after sitting at their sweatless, muscle-atrophying desk job? Yet for generations born into these showers, the dissatisfying experience was all they knew. Apparently, the shower sucks in Plato’s cave.

You may have heard that President Trump is no fan of these rules either, and has directed the Environmental Protect Agency to get rid of them. The executive branch cannot simply disregard the 2.5 gpm standard, an act of Congress. But the law is open to some crafty interpretation, as it fails to specify whether the entire showerhead must top out at 2.5 gpm or whether the limit can apply to each nozzle. As he did in his first term (before Biden overturned it), Trump is once again pushing the EPA for the latter interpretation, which would effectively neutralize the law.

Do low-flow showers save water?

By the mid-90s, a backlash was brewing. In 1996, The New York Times ran a story titled “Trickle Down Showerheads: A Real Nightmare,” which profiled New Yorkers who, “inspired [by] fits of indignation,” sought creative DIY ways to skirt the regulation. “On an average day we get three-, four-, five-dozen people, between phone calls and people who come in, who want showerheads with more water,” said one hardware store owner at the time. Complaints eventually made their way to Congress, prompting Michigan Rep. Joe Knollenberg to draft legislation repealing the 1992 law. Knollenberg testified to Congress in 1999 that he received thousands of complaints from constituents; “Their message is clear and straightforward: Get the federal government out of my bathroom.” In light of Knollenberg’s proposed legislation, Congress commissioned a report from the General Accounting Office to determine the “effectiveness” of the original act.

The report found that many low-flow restrictions were effective at reducing residential water use — just not in showers. Toilets use the most water per day on average, and one study showed low-flow models were just as effective at flushing while reducing water usage up to 57%. High-efficiency clothes washers, the appliance using the second highest amount of water per day, saw a 37% average reduction without a perceived loss in functionality. But studies on showers, the third most water-intensive appliance, were far more mixed.

A study in California’s East Bay showed that low-flow showers reduced water usage by 1.7 gallons per capita per day, about ⅓ the savings of low-flow toilets. Another study in Tampa, Florida showed savings of 3.6 gallons per capita per day, still just half the savings of toilets — and only down one-third from pre-EPAct shower water consumption figures. Finally, a study in Boulder, CO, which notably “used the most advanced equipment,” showed “no statistically significant effect on shower water consumption.”

Yet there is evidence to suggest low-pressure showers actually increase shower length, wasting more water in the process (and substantiating my wife’s complaint that it takes way too long to wash her hair). An expansive study from the University of Surrey tracked water consumption in 290 showers over 39 weeks, capturing 86,421 distinct shower events, and found that “[i]ncreased water pressure was strongly associated with reduced water use.” On average, participants in the high-pressure shower used about 56% less water than participants in the low-pressure shower.

Interpreting this study is a little bit challenging. Flow rate and pressure both enhance the shower experience, but they are not the same thing: flow is the amount of water, while pressure is the force per area hitting your skin (remember Newton’s Second Law). Higher pressure comes from increasing force (via more water or speed) or reducing area (with a narrower nozzle), though this creates smaller droplets. When manufacturers hold flow rates constant —as they must post-EPAct — while adjusting pressure, sensation varies from sharp pebbles to boulders. But when you remove the federal standard? That’s when you get the hot stone massage.

The shower, while functional, is also an experience. Washing your clothes or flushing the toilet is not an experience. A shower, though, is about you — it’s functional, but also revitalizing. After a long day’s work or intense exercise, whether cleaning off the ocean or getting the winter chill out of your bones, there is little that can compare to the primordial experience of warm water massaging your muscles. So it’s no wonder participants in the Surrey study stood interminably under a pitiful stream, waiting for a satisfaction that would never come — while those who quickly got their fix stepped out rejuvenated. And it’s at least worth considering whether an even better experience could lead to shorter showers with equal or less water wasted.

And isn’t that what innovation is all about in the first place?

Technology should enrich the human experience

Low-flow showers are likely failing to significantly conserve water, and they’ve negatively impacted one of life’s most beloved pleasures. Perhaps worse, they reflect the triumph of scarcity politics that represent all of our self-inflicted restrictions on actual progress: outlawing market dynamics in the name of efficiency, lowered expectations for infrastructure, apathy towards outcomes — and a civilizational shrug at how it all might be fixed. When we capped the human experience at 2.5 gpm, we also eliminated the incentive to accelerate innovative solutions to water conservation.

We can have nice things if we choose to. Shower/acc is the flag I wave in my head when I see basic human experiences under threat, especially as a matter of policy, as a misguided solution to a problem that could be improved with better technology or management. Removing the federal standard would allow market dynamics to eventually land on the appropriate balance of flow-rate, pressure, cost to install, and cost to operate.

And if water usage does go up because it makes people feel better? All the more reason to invest in technologies that make clean water cheaper and more abundant.

—Rob L’Heureux