[On August 10], the Los Angeles Shade Ball Cover Project rolled to a halt, rounding off years of work. With a shout of "shade balls away!" Los Angeles city officials overturned a row of sacks and sent 20,000 of the jet black objects cascading down into the Los Angeles Reservoir. [...]
Together, the ball shroud prevents damage from sunlight, dust, and errant birds, and keeps 300 million gallons of surface water from evaporating each year.
— atlasobscura.com
What's plastic, black, saves water and costs 36 cents each? Shade balls! The LA Mayor's Office's press release tells their origin story:
Dr. Brian White, a now-retired LADWP biologist, was the first person to think of using shade balls for water quality. The idea came to him when he learned about the application of “bird balls” in ponds along airfield runways. The innovative, in-house solution has been used in LADWP’s open-air reservoirs since 2008 to block sunlight, prevent chemical reactions and curtail algae blooms. Currently in place at Upper Stone, Elysian and Ivanhoe reservoirs, the shade balls come with the added benefit of reducing evaporation off the reservoir surfaces by 85 to 90 percent.
The "shade balls" news may be too late to make this week's Meme Monday, but I'll leave it up to Archinectors to cook up something ... memorable.
Watch a truckload of shade balls being emptied into the reservoir:
Have an idea for how to address the drought with design? Submit your ideas to the Dry Futures competition!
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8 Comments
How much water was used to create those balls in the first place?
It's a good question, Non Seq, and while this article doesn't answer it, it does shed more light (heh) on the overall wonderfullness of the endeavor: it's a woman-owned business employing disable vets.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-11/who-s-behind-the-96-million-shade-balls-they-just-rolled-into-l-a-s-reservoirs-
Also, the balls themselves are partially filled with potable water. Mind blown!!
I prefer my ball covers to be 100% Egyptian cotton.
the carbon footprint of those balls wiped out an entire arctic shelf.
I heard about this on NPR yesterday and thought it sounded smart until I thought of the degradation of plastics under the sun and the chemicals that leach out and in this case, into the water. I hope they've done those calculations.
This is all I can think of when I see these balls:
mr. burns a model humanitarian
Another article that better explains the shade ball composition.
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