Why Are 96,000,000 Black Balls on This Reservoir?

0:00 (shade balls rolling)- These are shade balls.

0:06 They're being dumped into this water reservoir in Los Angeles.

0:10 And contrary to what you may have heard,

0:13 their main purpose is not to reduce evaporation.

0:17 So what are they really for?

0:20 To find out, I'm visiting the largest

0:22 collection of these balls anywhere on earth, What?

0:25 at LA Reservoir.

0:27 (tranquil music) 96 million shade balls.

0:34 [Man 1] That's correct.

0:35 (laughing)- 96 million.

0:39 It's very rare to for you to see 96 million of anything.

0:41 [Man 1] Yeah.

0:42 (laughing)- This is your life vest which you are required to wear.

0:45 All right.

0:46 Throw a leg over and climb on in any way you can.

0:49 (tranquil music) There you go.

0:52 [Narrator] Thank you.

0:54 Looking at this, I had so many questions.

0:57 Like, why are they black?

0:59 Are they safe to have in drinking water?

1:01 How much do they cost?

1:03 Do they actually reduce evaporation?

1:05 And, what is their real purpose?

1:09 (boat engine roaring) Is that hard to drive in shade balls?

1:14 It is very hard.

1:15 Why is that?

1:17 'Cause...

1:18 (boat engine drowns James voice)-

1:20 These are actually partially filled with water,

1:22 and the reason they are filled with water is

1:24 that, at LA Reservoir we have some really high winds and so,

1:27 you know, if we didn't put water into these things,

1:29 there would be balls down bouncing on the 5 Freeway,

1:31 people drive down, they'd be all over the place.

1:33 So, these keep the balls in the reservoir and if they do start to roll,

1:37 they kind of wobble because the water makes them uneven.

1:40 [Narrator] But that makes them significantly more

1:42 difficult to push out of the way.

1:43 Especially, when they form close packed crystal-like structures.

1:48 Behind the boat, the balls quickly come together in our wake.

1:52 And some close to the motor are pulled along with the boat.

1:56 (boat engine stopping) Wow!

2:04 (wind blowing) (laughing) What did you think,

2:09 the first time they suggested doing this or when it first came in?

2:14 Yeah, it was a little out there.

2:17 [Narrator] Did you think they were nuts?

2:18 No, not nuts.

2:20 [Narrator] Well, it just, it like looks absurd.

2:22 It's like we're in the world's biggest ball pit.

2:25 Right, yeah, that's what it looks like.

2:26 Yeah, you can't tell by standing here that we are actually floating over,

2:30 I think it's probably, 40 feet right here, 40, 50 feet deep below us,

2:37 and you can't even seen any water.

2:40 You'd think it was a joke, right?

2:41 (laughing) If you didn't know, you'd go like,

2:44 "No you're not, that's (laughing) a green screen or something, right?

2:48 Yeah, its fake."- So like, when I switch on my tap at home,

2:52 is the water coming from here?

2:53 [Hellen] Yes.

2:55 Sometimes or always?

2:56 [Hellen] Yes, most of the time.

2:57 Most of the time?

2:58 [Hellen] Yes.

2:59 Most of the time the water is coming from here.

3:00 [Hellen] Correct, yes.

3:01 Absolutely nuts.

3:01 So why is LA Reservoir covered in shade balls?

3:05 Well, the the problem all started with Bromide.

3:08 Bromide is a naturally occurring substance.

3:10 It's associated with salt water and so normally places like California Aqueduct,

3:16 that comes down from the Delta.

3:18 You get some some salt water intrusions, so you have some Bromide in the water.

3:21 Bromide's harmless and it's almost impossible to remove.

3:24 But, when you disinfect the water with Ozone, that Bromide becomes Bromate.

3:30 And Bromate is carcinogenic.

3:31 And so around the year 2000 they wrote regulations regulating Bromate.

3:35 And the regulation basically said,

3:37 if you have a treatment plant that uses Ozone,

3:40 then you have to watch your Bromate formation.

3:42 Be careful not to form too much.

3:44 So, the only places we ever measured Bromate was at our filter plant.

3:47 [Narrator] And the results were always within

3:49 the 10 micrograms per liter limit set by regulators.

3:52 So they were confused when they got a call from one of their customers,

3:55 a beverage company in LA.

3:57 They said, "We have some really high levels of Bromate showing up,

4:00 are you aware of this?" And we said,

4:02 "Well, we don't show anything."- [Narrator] But between

4:04 the filtration plant and the customer was the reservoir.

4:07 So they did some tests.

4:10 Almost immediately upon coming into to this open reservoir,

4:12 the Bromate levels jumped.

4:14 It turned out that Bromide with Chlorine, which was supposed to be safe,

4:18 in bright sunlight formed Bromate even more than Ozone did.

4:23 And so we made the unfortunate scientific discovery

4:25 that actually was not part of any regulatory scheme.

4:29 And so, here we are at the reservoir,

4:31 we have a water source that's got Bromide in it, harmless, we have chlorine,

4:35 we have to have to disinfect the water and we have sunlight because it's open.

4:39 The only choice we have is to remove sunlight.

4:40 So, we looked at all sorts of things.

4:42 We looked at floating tarps across the water, and normally,

4:46 you put a floating cover on the water but that's a multi-year project.

4:49 And so we said, "Well, can we manufacture these kind of trampoline

4:52 with poly-like PVC pipe?" And we said, "Well,

4:54 they'll just gonna become bird perches and we'll have a big

4:56 water quality problem." Then we knew we had high-density polyethylene pipe,

5:01 which is used in the water industry, and we know that it floats.

5:04 We at one point thought about can we

5:06 get float a pile of pipe across the surface.

5:08 Well, that's hard to do and very expensive 'cause it's a lot of material.

5:12 So maybe we can take some pipe and we can run it

5:13 through a chipper and we can make a debris field across the surface,

5:16 like the back corner of a lake somewhere.

5:18 But, then you have all this mushy, warm water with plastic floating on the top

5:22 and that however sounds like a Petri dish.

5:24 And so low and behold, Dr.

5:26 Bryan White, did some research and he found the shade ball.

5:29 (tranquil music)- [Narrator] Except they weren't called shade balls at the time.

5:34 (tranquil music)- This product existed and they were called bird

5:38 balls and they used it on ponds that had mine tailings,

5:42 where they didn't want waterfowl to go in and get poisoned.

5:45 And also around airports where there are ponds and they want to keep

5:48 the waterfowl off so they didn't take off and get into jet engines.

5:52 (airplane engine roaring) You know they have

5:55 actually done wind tunnel testing and they blew,

5:57 you know, 50, 60 mile of winds across so they could see how they'd behave.

6:01 But, they were really made to deter

6:02 birds and wildlife from sitting on the water.

6:04 [Narrator] Did there used to be birds landing here more?

6:07 Absolutely, yes.

6:08 [Narrator] Yeah?

6:09 Yeah.

6:09 Once we deployed these balls, all the birds were gone.

6:11 They used to just hangout, right?

6:13 Loiter at the curbs.

6:15 Yeah, they'd be all over the top of the dam.

6:17 [Hellen] You could see birds dropping everywhere.

6:18 [James] They'd be down at the outlet tower, they'd be everywhere.

6:21 We don't get 'em anymore like we used to.

6:24 [Narrator] But before being added to the reservoir,

6:25 the shade balls had to be tested.

6:27 Would they actually reduce the formation of Bromate?

6:30 And we bought three kiddie pools, three little inflatable kiddie pools.

6:34 And we filled them all with the reservoir water.

6:36 One was in the sunlight, one we put a tarp on and one put shade balls on.

6:40 And amazingly, the shade balls knocked out the problem immediately.

6:44 [Narrator] So the reason shade balls are black is to block

6:46 all light from reaching the water and triggering the Bromate reaction.

6:50 The black pigment is also safe for contact with drinking

6:53 water and it's stable even exposed to the elements for years.

6:57 They're black for a reason so, you know,

6:59 they're made out of a high-density polyethylene.

7:01 It's the same material that like a gallon milk jug is made out of.

7:04 It's a food grade plastic and they would be clear like a milk carton,

7:08 except that they wouldn't last in the sun.

7:10 And so, they have a material called carbon black in them and that's

7:13 what makes the plastic last for at least 10 years out in the sun.

7:16 We did test to see if there is any other colors we could use.

7:19 So we actually had the company make three different shades of blue,

7:23 but the dyes were so unstable they said,

7:25 "We can't guarantee it's gonna last more than a year." And so,

7:28 it's that carbon black that's the magic powder

7:30 in this that really makes this product last in the sunlight.

7:33 One of the concerns that people raised to me when we put first

7:36 these on, it was that, are they gonna get hot and then bleach the material out?

7:40 And they don't.

7:41 They're totally inert.

7:42 I mean, theoretically,

7:42 you could cut off a piece of this ball and you could chew it,

7:45 no harm comes to you.

7:46 This is totally food grade, nothing wrong with it whatsoever.

7:49 [Narrator] What's it like driving through these things?

7:51 It's difficult.

7:52 As you can see we've been sitting here for, well, I don't know how long,

7:56 quite a while, and there's a breeze and we haven't moved.

7:59 I mean anybody that knows, that's been on a boat in a lake,

8:01 if there's a slight breeze and you're on a boat, you're drifting, right?

8:04 Not here.

8:05 This thing, they're just stable.

8:07 They're (indistinct) It's interesting when you try

8:10 to pilot the boat through these things, its difficult.

8:13 [Narrator] It's like driving through peanut butter or something?

8:14 Or something, I guess, yeah.

8:16 Not that I've ever done that but...

8:17 (laughing)- [Narrator] Blocking sunlight

8:19 from the reservoir also provided additional benefits.

8:22 You know, one of the reasons we put

8:23 so much Chlorine was to control the algae growth.

8:25 But sometimes you still couldn't control it.

8:27 There were times years ago, in the summer, where if we had an algae outbreak,

8:32 you might actually, if you filled a bath tub up,

8:34 you might have a slight tinge of green.

8:35 I mean, it maybe healthy to drink,

8:37 but it might have a slight tinge of green from the algae.

8:39 [Narrator] You'd see a bit of algae.

8:40 Yeah, and it's just discoloring the water.

8:41 That no longer occurs.

8:42 So, with the sunlight gone, the algae problem is gone.

8:46 We put in, basically, no Chlorine.

8:47 We've only had a few times since the shade balls have been on LA Reservoir,

8:50 that we've added any Chlorine at all.

8:51 And we used to do half the Chlorine and the whole

8:54 water system went into that reservoir just to control algae growth.

8:57 [Narrator] But the big concern I had was evaporation.

9:00 When I first heard about these black plastic balls reducing evaporation,

9:03 it didn't seem to make any sense.

9:05 I mean, wouldn't they absorb more energy and so heat up the water,

9:09 leading to faster evaporation?

9:11 It turns out the answer is, no, for a number of reasons.

9:15 In an open reservoir, there is more exposed surface area where

9:18 water molecules can escape into the air.

9:20 Plus, there is greater air flow over the water's surface continually

9:23 removing the layer of moist air and replacing it with dryer air,

9:28 increasing evaporation.

9:29 Now the shade balls do absorb more energy and get hotter on top,

9:32 but the bottom of the balls stays cool.

9:35 Plus the balls mostly contain air, which is a good thermal insulator and so not

9:39 much of the heat is transferred through to the water.

9:41 It's almost like a double-paned window, you know,

9:43 you get that air gap in there and the air acts as an insulator,

9:46 and so the sun never hits the water.

9:48 Matter of fact, we've actually done some measurements

9:49 and it's actually cooler under the shade balls,

9:51 even though they're black, than it is without the balls,

9:53 just with the sun itself.

9:55 [Narrator] Huh?

9:55 [Marty] So, the balls actually have a slight cooling effect.

9:57 [Narrator] So, for all of these reasons,

9:58 shade balls reduce evaporation by 80 to 90%.

10:02 That's pretty significant for a dry climate like Los Angeles.

10:06 [Narrator] How much do they cost?

10:08 These run about, around three for $1.

10:10 I think we paid 33, 34 cents a piece, something in that range.

10:13 And they actually will have a salvage value, not that much,

10:16 but if we go to remove them, they are recyclable material.

10:21 But we figured that over the life of the balls,

10:24 between the savings in chlorination, is chemical savings,

10:28 and the savings in evaporation,

10:30 probably at least half the cost of the balls will be paid for.

10:33 I mean, of course, the water quality benefit is immeasurable,

10:36 but even the balls themselves will save money doing what they do.

10:39 [Narrator] Do you ever bring people out here for tours?

10:42 You're the first one.

10:43 (laughing)- [Narrator] Why am I the first one to get to go on a tour here?

10:46 To get this level of detailed of tour, yes.

10:48 [Narrator] This is so cool!

10:49 I've heard something about hexagonal balls,

10:52 have you heard anything about hexagonal balls?

10:54 Oh, my gosh!

10:54 So, we have the shade balls, and of course,

10:56 everyone in the world came up with another product.

10:58 I have ones I call se ravioli, it's a small hex.

11:01 We've got large hexes, we have all sorts of pieces.

11:04 And people said, "Well, they lock together." But the problem is,

11:06 they need to not stack up and they need to not sit on the bank of the reservoir.

11:09 The reservoir is gonna go up and down.

11:10 And so it was really the shape of the ball that makes them not perch

11:15 on the side because we need to make sure

11:18 that these, when the water goes up and down,

11:19 that they spread up, or they, you know,

11:21 either spread out completely to cover the water as best possible.

11:24 [Narrator] I mean, I just can't get over what I'm seeing, it's just so nuts.

11:27 I'm waiting for you to say it looks like a pool of boba.

11:30 (laughing)- [Narrator] I feel like that's the line

11:34 that'll go in, but you got it.

11:35 Like, that is, that's awesome.

11:40 Do you like boba?

11:42 I love boba.

11:43 (laughing) I might get some after this.

11:45 (laughing) (techno sound) (boat engine roaring)