The City of Los Angeles regularly experience extreme drought and water supply scarcity. To protect the city’s water supply, the city of Los Angeles unloaded 96,000,000 small black balls into its reservoirs to help maintain good water quality.
These small black balls, known as shade balls, were created by a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) employee, and are designed to reduce evaporation each year by nearly 300 million gallons, and will save more than $250 million compared to other preservation plans the city was considering. The shade balls also eliminated the need for LADWP to add disinfecting chemicals directly into the LA Reservoir, saving approximately $28,000 each month in chlorine costs.
