Well, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power appears to have gone a bit nuts. They dropped over 400,000 black floating plastic balls (also known as “bird balls”) into the Ivanhoe Reservoir, which is next to the Silver Lake Reservoir. Within thirty minutes they dumped enough “bird balls” into the water making it look like an oil spill for all those people who have a beautiful home along the side of the water. But, apparently it’s for our own good. The water in the reservoir needs to be shaded in order to help protect our water supply.
Recently, dangerous levels of bromide have been found in the reservoir, but during a time of drought, we can’t afford to drain the water. So… we have to shade it with black floating plastic balls four out of every twelve months of the year.
The water needs to be shaded because when sunlight mixes with the bromide and chlorine in Ivanhoe’s water, the carcinogen bromate forms, said Pankaj Parekh, DWP’s director for water quality compliance. Bromide is naturally present in groundwater and chlorine is used to kill bacteria, he said, but sunlight is the final ingredient in the potentially harmful mix.
Open reservoirs exposed to sunlight are now rare. The area’s reservoirs — Silver Lake, Ivanhoe and Elysian — first registered elevated levels of bromate between June and October 2007. But state health officials said the dangers were minimal because bromate poses a small cancer risk only after consumed daily over a lifetime.
But the discovery of bromate prompted officials to look for ways of shading Elysian and Ivanhoe. A tarp would have been too expensive and a metal cover would take too long to install, especially in a year of drought. So one of the DWP’s biologists, Brian White, suggested “bird balls,” commonly used by airports to prevent birds from congregating in wet areas alongside runways.
Residents from the area seem to understand the urgency of the situation and have opted for health over vanity.
Pebble-heavy “plops” permeated the laughter of smiling onlookers. City Councilman Tom LaBonge shouted, “For quality of water for all of Los Angeles!” with each of three balls he chucked into the water.
Resembling a stream of oversized caviar, the black balls rolled thunderously down the reservoir’s slopes. “Water quality doesn’t get more exciting than this,” Marina J.F. Busatto, a DWP biologist, said smiling.
“It looks like an oil spill,” quipped Marilyn Oliver, 63, who has lived on a hill overlooking the reservoir for 45 years. But, she quickly added, “it’s OK because it’s temporary and the water quality is more important than the looks.”
Ivanhoe and Elysian reservoirs will be blanketed by about 3 million balls each for about four years, Parekh said.
Photo and quotes by LATimes.com
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