Fined for a product being too wasteful?

I read about this story in a Consumer Reports magazine the other day and it angered me to the point of writing about it(obviously an extreme response to anger). The article can be found online at the following link: Consumer Reports Article. The article detailed a UK based company, Hudson Reed, that is being fined $1.9 million by the Department of Energy for violating shower head flow rate requirements. These regulations require that a shower head not exceed a rate of 2.5 gallons per minute at a pressure of 80 psi. The "Shower Tower" manufactured by Hudson Reed has multiple shower heads that can deliver up to 2.5 gallons per minute from each shower head. Tests, however, showed that the rate from the main head was closer to 3.95 gpm. It seems to be clear that the company violated the regulations in question, but the main problem with this situation is not whether the company violated the DOE requirements, but rather that there were requirements to begin with.

First of all, I must say that I am all in favor of conservation. I believe that we should use resources wisely in a manner that best balances our wants and needs with the health of the environment around us. I must clarify "health of the environment," however, to mean the condition of the environment most favorable to human health. Humans should ultimately seek a level of conservation most favorable to themselves, not to any other biotic or abiotic factor.

This being said, the American economy is driven by consumption and balanced by price. If someone wants to buy a shower head that uses 4x more water, I don't see any reason why they should not be allowed to do so. This consumer will simply have to spend 4x the amount on his/her water bill, which I think would be a deterent to a good deal of consumers. I do not, however, think the company should be punished for thinking of and developing new products for human use. As long as consumer safety is maintained, it should be the markets, not the governments, that decide what products will succeed and what products will go down the drain (bad pun intended).