Worldwide, Progressive Policies Are Toilet

Thirteen years of Labour illustrated very clearly that the lefty mindset of passing poorly though-out laws, based on blind ideology, is a recipe for a hangar-load of unintended consequences. Naturally, when presented with the disastrous fallout (before or after legislating), the general response is to simply place a couple of digits in each ear and pretend nothing is awry or, if that isn't an option, to compound the error by doing something utterly daft.

Here's a superb example of the latter from everyone's least favourite stalinist dictatorship.

San Francisco's big push for low-flow toilets has turned into a multimillion-dollar plumbing stink.

Skimping on toilet water has resulted in more sludge backing up inside the sewer pipes, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the city Public Utilities Commission. That has created a rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park and elsewhere, especially during the dry summer months.

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.

It would seem that a law signed into existence by Governor Arnie in 2007 is not exactly having the desired effect. Not satisfied with crippling California's economy, the 'progressive' lunatics are finding their attempt at green toilet oneupmanship is hurtling down the pan faster than their morning dump tends to do these days.

And it's only going to get worse.

California law should require fixture manufacturers to provide a portion of toilet and urinal models that are high efficiency on a five-year schedule, starting with 50% of fixtures offered for sale in 2010. The proportion of high-efficiency toilets increases to 67% in 2011, 75% in 2012, 85% in 2013 and 100% — except for institutional toilets — in 2014.

The stench of self-righteousness in San Fran has been increasing for many a year, but now it is being matched by the stink on its streets thanks to an inept, dogmatic push to save water for the sake of the planet.

Something has to be done about this, of course. So what has the proud, majestic, sanctimonious, world-leading administration on green policies proposed?

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. It will also be used to sanitize drinking water.

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

How very environmentally friendly, eh?

Still, the law must have provided benefits apart from our peals of laughter at the discomfort suffered by right-on ex-hippies who choose this ghastly mirror of a soviet state as their home, right? Well, kinda.

As for whether the supposedly environmentally friendly, low-flow toilets are worth the trouble? Well, according to Jue, they have helped trim San Francisco's annual water consumption by about 20 million gallons.

Wow! That sounds quite a lot. But then, it's a big city.

According to this website, the Gross Annual Water Sales for San Francisco in 2007/2008 was 34,137,635 ccf. One ccf is 100 cubic feet which is approximately 748 gallons/ccf

That means the gross annual water sales for San Francisco is approximately 25,534,950,980 gallons per year.

San Francisco saves 20,000,000 gallons/year from low-flow toilets.

(20,000,000 (gal/yr) / 25,534,950,980 (gal/yr) ) * 100% = .08%

So, San Francisco reduces water consumption by 8 HUNDREDTHS OF ONE PERCENT at the expense of hundreds of millions of dollars to the sewer system alone (not counting the cost to consumers of the low-flow toilets and associated plumbing problems), and they are now likely to add millions of pounds of the environmentally hazardous and corrosive bleach to their sewers.

This seems wacko even by government standards.

Not really. It's par for the course where lefties are concerned.

Give them a bit of power and everything turns to crap ... quite literally in this instance.