10 Year lifetime? Just the lifespan of these plastic balls being beaten with sunlight?
LA is dumping millions of plastic balls into its reservoir to tackle the drought
41–50 of 78 posts
Re: LA is dumping millions of plastic balls into its reservoir to tackle the drought
#42This may seem like a silly question, but...
Why on earth are you chlorinating the water in the reservoir? I've never seen any other country that does that. Isn't it a really, really terrible idea? Environmentally ghastly because you kill everything in the reservoir, expensive due to chlorine loss, subject to side effects (like this one), and ideally suited to breeding chlorine-resistant bacteria... not to mention giving you nigh-undrinkable water!
I'm from the UK, and we chlorinate our water pretty heavily, but even we don't do this.
(I now live in Switzerland. Water in Zürich is purified via activated carbon, live biofilm and ozonation. The water which comes out of the tap is unchlorinated and is better and more drinkable than most bottled mineral water.)
Re: LA is dumping millions of plastic balls into its reservoir to tackle the drought
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't it make more sense to add the chlorine after the water is drawn from the reservoir? Doesn't that fix the bromate problem at the root?
Just a guess, but maybe chlorine needs a good amount of time to be effective, and the transit time from reservoir to tap might not be enough
Why not use ozone to teat the water. It's a better solution that chlorine, even more effective to kill bacteria.
Re: LA is dumping millions of plastic balls into its reservoir to tackle the drought
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was the article edited after you read it? > And the primary reason for deploying the hollow balls is more to protect the quality of the water rather than to simply stop it evaporating. In the reservoir water, the naturally occurring bromide was mixing with sunlight and chlorine (added to disinfect drinking water) to create dangerous levels of the the carcinogen bromate. Shade balls should stop that harmful chemical r…
Is there any reason why you guys don't have your reservoirs underground? It seems to me that that would solve a lot of problems.
They have space, and they conceived this system, like many others, thinking of what was the easiest thing to do, disregarding a low-maintenance approach.
Re: LA is dumping millions of plastic balls into its reservoir to tackle the drought
#45Looks like 3d simulation example came to life :)
But seriously, why balls are used? They say it's cheap but 36 cents doesn't look too cheap on the hundreds of millions scale. Wouldn't it be better to use sheet-like form? It will be covering space more efficiently.
Re: LA is dumping millions of plastic balls into its reservoir to tackle the drought
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't it make more sense to add the chlorine after the water is drawn from the reservoir? Doesn't that fix the bromate problem at the root?
I would guess that having loads of dead algae in your drinking water is not much better than live algae. You want to keep assorted gunk from having a chance to grow in the first place.
But certainly the water is filtered before reaching homes, considering it rests a long time in a open reservoir. So you could remove the dead algae. Still, they certainly have a "better dead" approach, wanting the reservoir to be a dead pool instead of a living ecosystem where they'd have to monitor what is growing and how dangerous it might be.
Re: LA is dumping millions of plastic balls into its reservoir to tackle the drought
#47Do they really need to invent that much? It's true that the current situation is maybe the worst they ever faced. But there are a lot of places where water is even more valuable as a resource. Are they also looking into what people in the desert do to keep their water sources alive, etc?
I do wonder if it's a different set of challenges. The demand for water in California is probably much greater, rather than adapting everyone's use to the climate. So I suspect the innovation is to sustain the level of water usage that isn't seen in the desert.
Re: LA is dumping millions of plastic balls into its reservoir to tackle the drought
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
doesn't the plastic + sunlight + heat combination release dangerous chemicals in the water? also, why are they black, doesn't that attract more heat?
That's what I thought, too. Shiny silver balls would reflect even more light, and look super-cool!
Being balls, they would also reflect that light into the water
Re: LA is dumping millions of plastic balls into its reservoir to tackle the drought
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Covering the reservoir with a tarp is too expensive (costing over $300 million) and plastic balls are a much cheaper option. This is what I don't get in this story. How on Earth are plastic balls cheaper than just covering the thing? One would think that a tarp would use less material and be easier to manufacture than the equivalent number of plastic balls. EDIT: Thanks for all your answers. I guess the heatwaves w…
Will tarp be a single piece or multiple pieces? What's the weight of the tarp? how do you make sure it's on the surface? Or do you need a support structure to keep it above the surface (say a meter etc.)? Will it have holes to drain? Will holes be sturdy enough in the long run? etc...
I was thinking why they use ball form instead of something sheet-like. E.g. thin pancake - it will have same properties as the balls but will cover surface more efficiently, if you count material.
Re: LA is dumping millions of plastic balls into its reservoir to tackle the drought
#50I think the story sounds a bit ironic:
So you are essentially dumping objects made out of chemicals, you had to drill wholes in the ocean ground to get, into a lake, because you found out that the chemicals you dumped into it earlier kill you when the sun shines on them. You also think that this might help you with the water shortage caused by unsustainable use of resources.
To me this all sounds like we arrived at a local maximum here. This simply cannot be the way to do this. Maybe we should start over.