Posted on 08/11/2015 5:34:59 PM PDT by dead
Black balls matter
We can replace those with rubber duckies.
Right after we restock the lake with plastic delta smeltas.
This article answers the question we had while driving past this once beautiful reservoir. From the freeway it has an eerie black shadow to it, we could not figure out what it was.
They whave also greatly increased the surface area that dust and crap will build up on, and be rotated into the water.
“Uuuummm, why are they black????”
“The balls, around the size of a large apple, cost 36 cents each and are black because it is the only colour that is able to deflect UV rays. “
Why don’t they just quit dumping water into the ocean?
The shade balls of Los Angeles are 4 inches in diameter, hollow, polyethylene orbs made by XavierC, of Glendora, Calif.; Artisan Screen Process, of Azuza, Calif.; and Orange Products, of Allentown, Penn. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has now dumped 96 million balls into local reservoirs to reduce evaporation and block sunlight from encouraging algae growth and toxic chemical reactions. The balls are coated with a chemical that blocks ultraviolet light and helps the spheres last as long as 25 years. Las Virgenes, north of L.A., now uses shade balls, too.
These are not your average Chuck E. Cheese’s ball-pit numbers. They’re hermetically sealed, with water inside them as ballast, lest when the wind picks up “they’ll blow out, and you’ll be chasing them down the road,” says Sydney Chase, president of XavierC. You could drink the ballast—don’t want nonpotable water leaking into the reservoirs.
Chase is a 30-year veteran of manufacturing who left a $300,000 job to start XavierC. She sold her house to raise the capital to seed the company. “Either I’m going to end up under an overpass, or this is going to take off,” she recalls thinking. And as much fun as there is to have with “shade balls,” the company was founded for two serious reasons.
Chase calls her product “conservation balls,” because they can help keep reservoirs intact and clean. They’re also seeing use on the tailing ponds where miners store contaminated water, to keep birds away from toxic agents, and in wastewater treatment facilities, to keep odors at bay. They cost about 36¢ each to make. Chase declined to talk about XavierC’s financial performance.
The second reason is built into the company’s name. The “Xavier” is Xavier Castillo, who worked for 18 years in information technology at the Pomona-based Casa Colina physical rehabilitation center. Castillo, 47, survived a car accident at 27 that left him a quadriplegic. He and Chase met by chance four years ago, and he came on board when he learned she wanted to hire disabled veterans who’d been having trouble finding work elsewhere. Factory work itself would be difficult for many of them, so Chase envisioned a company at which vets could perform administrative, marketing, and other tasks on a computer. Castillo controls his own computer using his neck and shoulder muscles, Chase says.
Her involvement can get a lot more personal. At a business meeting earlier this year, Castillo started having a seizure and stopped breathing, and Chase resuscitated him: “I was shaking so hard, I could barely talk,” she says.
The second of 10 children in a family where some have served in the military, Chase says she was moved by the images of America’s war-injured. “Honestly, it’s just seeing these kids coming home,” she says. “They’re very physical people, and you come back not able to do things you were made to do. It just kind of broke my heart.’
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has encouraged the nation’s water managers in recent years to find ways to cover or contain their resources, to prevent sunlight from reacting with chlorine and possibly creating carcinogens, says Ed Osann, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. The shade balls shouldn’t pose a pollution problem in themselves, he says, since “everything that comes in contact with drinking water has to be a certified material.” Chase says the balls are designed not to degrade.
The shade balls are a novel way to protect drinking water, and Californians’ latest attempt to adjust to their four-year drought. But they reflect a larger question: What can we do to the earth, its water, air, and land, to mitigate climate-related changes?
Today it’s shade balls. In the future we might have to send millions of reflective 1-inch metal-walled balloons up to the Arctic to act as synthetic sea ice to bounce sunlight away and slow the melting. (A fanciful but actual suggestion made by the inventor of the hydrogen bomb.)
L.A.’s shade balls experiment is geo-engineering writ small. Something to consider, as elsewhere scientists struggle to understand geo-engineering writ large.
Maybe their plan is with the black balls the water will be naturally heated as it goes into the homes. No need for water heaters.
What about blue ball's?
Baseballs?
Ping Pong balls?
The would likely repel them, looking more like a solid surface than water. Which means the birds have to fly farther to the next still water. Nesting season is over.
There are reports that due to the drought that the Delta Smelt may be extinct ... That would be great ... the idiot moves California made to protect this chub minnow helped create the huge farm problem ...
Black balls are going to produce from very hot water..
Clearly, you want a surface which is highly reflective to IR, like on a satellite exposed to direct sunlight. Aluminum does this quite well. Only an aluminum coating would be required.
Because he left is STUPID .. and they do stupid things.
Evaporation reduction is a secondary benefit, the Federal EPA was requiring them to cover their domestic water reservoirs...the other option was floating covers that would have cost $300 million. They saved the ratepayers $260 million this way.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/08/11/431670483/la-rolls-out-water-saving-shade-balls
Now I’m just an old oilfield hand from West Texas, might have a little education in my back ground but I notice a couple of problem’s with this concept.
1. The black balls absorb heat.
2. The area of the ball above the surface is greater than the area it shades.
3. The balls will rotate and roll covering the entire area of the ball above surface with water.
4. The area covered in water will be at a higher temp than the water surface.
It’s my opinion that this process will actually expose more water to heat, sun and wind and increase the evaporation rate.
Hmmm. Yeah that would work.
Try again. Gold coloring on space hardware is actual gold which is most reflective in near IR and IR (750nm-1500nm).
http://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=5011
http://www.edmundoptics.com/technical-resources-center/optics/metallic-mirror-coatings/
Try again, Tom-Dick. No one said gold is not higher in reflectivity or that selective coating is not used on orbital vehicles. On many surfaces aluminum alloy is adequate (ask the Russians). And if you think LA is going to float millions of 24kt balls, well, you’re a dick.
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