Browse regulations

This regulation establishes water supply charges for surface water users in the Delaware River Basin, administered by the Delaware River Basin Commission. It requires payment from users based on consumptive ($105/million gallons) and non-consumptive ($1.05/million gallons) use, with annual CPI adjustments. It defines 'legal entitlement' based on historical baselines (1961/1971) to determine exemption amounts, mandates certificates of entitlement with severe transfer restrictions, imposes quarterly reporting, and charges 1% monthly interest on late payments. The regulation includes exemptions for small uses, agricultural transfers, and hydroelectric facilities, with complex termination provisions triggered by ownership changes as low as 20%.

This interstate compact regulation imposes substantial hidden costs on water users through bureaucratic certificates, restrictive transfer rules that create artificial scarcity, and punitive 12% annual interest penalties. The historical entitlement system locks in 1961/1971 baselines, barring new entrants and violating equal protection. The 20% ownership change trigger terminates certificates, destroying property rights and investment security. Reporting burdens and admin costs fall disproportionately on small users. The Commission's pricing power without democratic accountability represents unaccountable taxation. The regulation persists due to regulatory capture by incumbents who benefit from barriers to competition.

Comprehensive flood plain management regulations establishing prohibited uses, permitted uses, and special permit requirements for floodways and flood fringes, with Class I and II project review procedures and environmental criteria for flood plain development.

Excessive federal micromanagement of local land use decisions that should be handled by states and localities under the Tenth Amendment. Creates costly compliance burdens on property owners and businesses while imposing one-size-fits-all restrictions that ignore local conditions and needs.

This regulation implements the Government in the Sunshine Act's open meeting requirements for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, establishing procedures for public notice, open meetings, and limited closed sessions with specific exemptions for national security, personnel matters, trade secrets, and other sensitive information.

Americans would be worse off if this regulation was deleted because it ensures transparency in commodity futures trading oversight, prevents backroom deals that could manipulate markets, and protects sensitive financial information that, if disclosed, could cause market instability or harm individual privacy.

This regulation establishes comprehensive investigative procedures for the Flammable Fabrics Act, granting the Commission broad authority to inspect facilities, collect samples, issue subpoenas, conduct hearings, and obtain testimony to enforce compliance with flammability standards and related consumer safety laws.

This regulation creates a massive administrative apparatus that intrudes on private business operations without constitutional justification. The Flammable Fabrics Act itself represents federal overreach into what should be state or market matters - flammability standards are better handled by state tort law, consumer choice, and private certification. The investigative powers granted here enable regulatory harassment, impose compliance costs that disproportionately harm small businesses, and create a bureaucratic infrastructure that exists to perpetuate itself rather than protect consumers.

Federal regulation setting mandatory safety standards for pacifiers: dimensional requirements, structural integrity tests (tensile force, heat cycle), prohibition on attachments, and labeling warnings to prevent choking and strangulation hazards.

Delete due to federal overreach into a state/local matter, imposing compliance costs that disproportionately burden small businesses and stifle innovation. The rigid technical specs suffer from a knowledge problem—regulators cannot optimally determine safety thresholds—and preempt more efficient market-based safety incentives via liability and reputation, while creating a false sense of security. Unseen costs include reduced competition, constrained design freedom, and erosion of constitutional federalism.

This regulation requires manufacturers and importers of self-pressurized consumer products containing chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) propellants to affix warning labels stating that CFCs may harm public health and the environment by reducing stratospheric ozone. It also requires these entities to submit reports to the Consumer Product Safety Commission identifying products containing CFC propellants. The regulation aims to inform consumers about the environmental impact of CFCs to enable conscious purchasing decisions.

This regulation is obsolete. CFC propellants have been effectively banned in the United States since the 1990s under the Clean Air Act Amendments implementing the Montreal Protocol. No self-pressurized consumer products containing CFC propellants are legally manufactured or imported in the U.S. today, making the labeling and reporting requirements entirely moot. Maintaining this regulation on the federal register creates unnecessary compliance burdens and adds to regulatory complexity without serving any current purpose. Even if CFCs were still in use, the global nature of ozone depletion requires prohibition rather than consumer notification, as individual consumer choices cannot address the externality problem.

Bans artificial emberizing materials (decorative fireplace ashes/embers) containing respirable free-form asbestos due to cancer risk. Products are used in gas fireplaces to simulate glowing embers and pose continuous 24/7 inhalation risk of肺癌 and mesothelioma. Substitutes exist with minimal market disruption.

Deleting this ban would expose Americans to carcinogenic asbestos fibers in their homes for purely aesthetic reasons. Asbestos causes lung cancer and mesothelioma with no safe exposure level; the risk is continuous and invisible. A ban is necessary because market forces cannot protect consumers from this latent hazard—the harm emerges decades later and affects all household members unknowingly. The regulation achieves its goal with minimal cost impact (<$25,000 total) and had near-universal industry compliance even before effective date, demonstrating it was both necessary and efficiently designed.

Bans consumer patching compounds containing intentionally-added respirable free-form asbestos due to cancer risk. Applies to products used in homes, schools, and other consumer environments after sanding; excludes industrial-only products.

Asbestos has no safe exposure threshold; ban prevents severe, non-consensual harm to consumers and families. Tort system is inadequate for preventing cancer. Regulation narrowly targets high-risk consumer products with feasible substitutes.

Regulation bans lead-containing paint (exceeding 0.06% lead, reduced to 0.009% in 2009) and its application on toys, children's articles, and furniture manufactured after February 27, 1978. Exemptions exist for industrial coatings, artist paints, and certain metal furniture. CPSC found lead paint poses unreasonable risk of childhood lead poisoning causing permanent neurological damage, blindness, or death.

Americans would be worse off without this ban because lead poisoning causes irreversible harm to children's developing brains, including lowered IQ, behavioral disorders, and even death. The ban achieves its desired outcome effectively through a clear, enforceable standard that the market failed to establish on its own due to information asymmetries and delayed health effects that prevent tort law from providing adequate deterrence. Repealing it would reintroduce a known neurotoxin into environments where children are exposed, creating costs—medical, educational, and societal—that far exceed the minimal compliance burden.

This regulation bans extremely flammable contact adhesives and similar liquid consumer products that pose explosion and fire risks. It defines banned products by flash point, viscosity, solvent content, and packaging size, with a January 1978 effective date.

The ban eliminates a specific product category based on statistical injury data while alternatives exist. Market forces and tort liability already incentivize safer formulations. The $2-6 price increase for alternatives represents a hidden tax on consumers, and the regulation distorts competition by protecting incumbent safer adhesive manufacturers from market pressure.

Bans metal refuse bins ≥1 cubic yard that tip under test forces (70 lb horizontal, 191 lb vertical), finding they pose unreasonable risk of injury/death, especially to children, and no feasible safety standard would protect the public.

Deletion would endanger children and others; the inherent instability cannot be addressed by warnings alone, and tort law would be reactive and inadequate given the bins' rental use and long lifespan. The performance-based ban ensures only safe bins enter commerce, preventing harm proactively.

Federal safety standard requiring glazing materials in doors, windows, and enclosures to meet impact resistance requirements to prevent injuries from broken glass, with testing and labeling requirements for manufacturers.

This regulation prevents thousands of serious injuries annually, particularly to children, from broken glass in doors and windows. The costs are minimal (about $30-50 per housing start in non-regulated states) compared to the public health benefits of reducing lacerations, contusions, and more severe injuries.

Establishes procedures for public access to Consumer Product Safety Commission records under FOIA, including request submission methods, processing timelines, fee structures, and appeal mechanisms.

This regulation creates bureaucratic overhead and compliance costs for a federal agency that should be able to operate efficiently without mandated FOIA procedures. The $2 trillion annual regulatory compliance burden includes unnecessary administrative procedures like these that could be handled through simpler agency discretion. The unseen costs include agency resources diverted from safety oversight to paperwork processing, and the false sense of transparency that masks actual regulatory inefficiencies.

The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act regulates written warranties on consumer products, requiring clear designation of 'full' vs 'limited' warranties, prohibiting tying arrangements that mandate specific branded parts/services, restricting unreasonable duties in full warranties, and setting rules for service contracts. It defines coverage based on product type, cost thresholds ($10+), and manufacturing date (post-July 4, 1975), while exempting certain disclosures and exports.

This federal regulation imposes significant compliance costs on businesses for disclosures and warranty structuring that could be more efficiently handled by state laws and existing FTC authority against deceptive practices. The 'tying arrangement' provisions, while well-intentioned to promote repair competition, duplicate antitrust principles and create regulatory complexity. The hidden costs of mandatory labeling, registration restrictions, and federal enforcement burden exceed the marginal consumer protection benefits, especially given that warranty terms are already subject to contract law and state consumer protection statutes. The Act exemplifies federal overreach into commercial regulation properly reserved to states under the Tenth Amendment, and its prescriptive requirements distort market incentives by dictating warranty form rather than policing warranty fraud.

This regulation implements the Government in the Sunshine Act for the Export-Import Bank, establishing procedures for open meetings, defining exemptions allowing closures (national security, trade secrets, law enforcement, etc.), requiring public announcements, recorded votes, General Counsel certifications, and maintenance of transcripts/minutes of closed meetings.

Deletion would reduce transparency and public oversight of Eximbank's decisions, enabling greater potential for wasteful spending, corruption, and unaccountable quasi-government lending. The minimal administrative costs of meeting notices, votes, and record-keeping are vastly outweighed by the civic value of sunlight on an agency that dispenses public financing. Sunshine requirements align with liberty by ensuring citizens can scrutinize government actions that affect them.