Conserving water?

I have had several occasions to curse our federally-mandated small-capacity toilets recently. One wonders under what authority the government can justify requiring certain types of toilets. Is it because toilet-makers all sell to different states? Could you set up a manufacturer operating only in a particular state to get around this rule?

My bigger question, though, is why anyone would want to conserve water. I can understand conserving a lot of things, but water is not one of them. Doesn't it just get recycled by nature? How can we possibly run out of water? Maybe in a big urban area, you might need to conserve water because you don't have enough locally, and it would be expensive to pipe it in from elsewhere. Elsewhere, however, water conservation seems like the strangest idea.

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