Dan Espen wrote:

Cheaters or some other unidentified source?

As the article indicated, phosphates come from many sources and the original 15%
reduction number was pulled out of the air.

Looks like they spared no expense with the water treatment plant.
Removing phosphorus is expensive:

Not arguing that point. The reality is that those plant changes were required
for that one location only and noone is arguing that the residents of Spokane
aren't entitled to decide what kinds of detergent formulations they want sold.

The less efficient and more expensive detergent solution was imposed on the
entire country - and Spokane was still required to install the additional
treatment equipment.

A bit like when car emission checks were first made mandatory. Every study of
vehicles at the time showed that it took at least 5 years and usually over 10
before a car would drop out of spec for emissions. So why did everyone have to
have their car checked every year? Why not just those with vehicles over 5 or 10
years old?

The response was usually "Well, it wouldn't be fair to penalized those with
older vehicles." Eventually the argument became people were putting leaded gas
in unleaded vehicles. Funny thing though - even after leaded gas was phased out,
those annual checks hung around. And people who paid the additional cost of a
new vehicle still paid for unneeded annual emission checks.

At least in some states now they wait until 2 or 3 years before starting.