The new strategy, unveiled yesterday by DWP officials, is to dump hundreds of thousands of plastic balls onto the Ivanhoe Reservoir’s surface (a reservoir adjacent to the Silver Lake Reservoir) to shade its water from sunlight. The reason for this rather unorthodox approach is simple: by blocking the sun, you prevent the reaction between bromide and chlorine, which forms bromate, from occurring.
So now it’s a big wet ball pit
Three million black plastic balls, 10 cm diameter each, loaded with antioxidants, UV absorbers, and ozone-protectants so they don’t go to mulch in full California sunlight. Black heats in sunlight speeding things along. Sphere total area is (3×10^6)4(pi)(5 cm)^2 or 10^9 cm^2 in round numbers. 100,000 square meters of hot plastic will be leaching additives into reservoir drinking water. Given California wildfires… do they also contain cryptoestrogenic and carcinogenic fire retardants?