June 11th, 2008 
Spooky 
Thousands of black plastic balls cover the Ivanhoe reservoir in Los Angeles.
It might not look like serious business, but The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power dropped 400,000 black plastic balls into one of the city’s reservoirs for a reason. The sunlight mixes with the chlorine and bromide in the water creating a deadly mix which some scientist believe may be causing cancer. The balls are meant to shade the water from the dangerous sunlight.
Sure a tart or some kind of lid would have seemed more normal, but the authorities say a tart would have cost to much too manufacture and a metal lid would have taken too long. So, although it looks like an oil spill, this was the best measure and it’s only temporary, the Ivanhoe and Elysian reservoirs will be covered by 3,000,000 black plastic balls for the next four years.
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what on earth is this about?
lol
What?
Yup, I would really appriciate an explanation too.
the text blurb wasn’t there when i posted
Yeah, sorry about that Alex, there was a power outage when I had just uploaded the photos, so I didn’t get to write the text until this morning
Only problem, the balls are made out of #7 plastic, which leaches carcinogenic chemicals into the water. But in a city whose smog fills residents lungs with the equivalent carcinogens as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, does it really even matter? LOL
I wonder if they’ve really thought this through… sunlight is heating the chlorine and bromide in the water resulting in gassing. But _black_ plastic balls will soak up more heat than the relatively reflective surface of the water, most likely leading to _increased_ heating of the reservoir…, and thus _more_ gassing.
Woudln’t it have made more sense to remover the chlorine and bromide by pumping the water through micro-pore filters, or distilling it? You’d need to remove that stuff from the water anyway before using it for anything.
Awesome – almost looks photoshopped!
If you were to tell me that they were doing this as a cost effective way to heat the water, I would have understood that.
Americans,,,, you just cant live without them
I bookmarked your blog, thanks for sharing this very interesting article