Griffith Park, Interrupted

Julian Harris-Calvin, Councilman Tom LaBonge’s assistant, a cheerful girl with a very busy schedule, said Marty Adams, some kind of scientist, would call me. He didn’t. I finally got him the next week.

We talked for a good 40 minutes. Surprise -he’s not a scientist! He’s a PR spokesman for DWP, and I see him quoted a lot in the media. He said he is an engineer.

He was very informed and helpful in explaining the difference between chlorine and chloramines, both of which can be added to water to purify it. I knew some of this already, but he went into great detail anyway. Basically, the DWP was using chlorine up until now to disinfect the water. No other reservoirs in the country had ever noticed that it can combine with sunlight to form bromate. (Bromide itself is safe, and is in salt. Our water from the aquifers up north do get some bromide from the delta. We’re talking prehistoric here, folks! It’s all okay! It’s when sunlight and chlorine hit bromide that it turns funny.)

“It’s a small, small, small, small world.”

So, since we have open reservoirs we get very strict instructions from the state (Surface Water Treatment Regulations) on how to treat it. (Thus most cities have put their reservoirs underground so as not to go through all of this. As we were supposed to do starting in 2005, if you read the Report. But DWP hasn’t even begun to design the new underground reservoirs in Headworks they are SUPPOSED to be using!!)

Marty said they did their own private tests on chlorine and chloramines, and placed little bottles at different depths in a test pool. They didn’t hire any outside agencies or scientists. They decided no one knew anything about this, so they’d just try stuff themselves. (Who here thinks chemistry experiments like this are a good idea for 3 million people, raise your hand?) Chlorine can form bromate. Chloramines won’t form bromate, but it’s not as strong as chlorine, and it breaks down into ammonia, and algae can form; it’s a poor disinfectant. Since algae is described as “Nature’s Perfect Food,” with tons of nutrients, what’s the problem? Marty said, it’s taste and odor. He said:

Don’t you remember the bathtubs with green water a few years ago?

No, I don’t. He explained that is because those of us who live near Silver Lake actually get our water from a different source. Ivanhoe Reservoir feeds East LA and Chinatown, and Silver Lake feeds SouthCentral LA and Downtown. Silver Lake isn’t for us, he said, it’s for those people.

Oh. Well that’s okay, then. If anyone gets green bathwater, it should be them.

Marty Adams, some kind of scientist, is the main decision maker on this project he said, so he has decided to buy 3 million bird balls to stop the sun from making possible bromate in the water. He didn’t know bird balls were made from HDPE. He didn’t know HDPE is only made by Exxon and Chevron, so we are really giving our $2 million to the big oil companies. He didn’t know the plastic he’s buying is not recycled. He said:

I did consider using basketballs instead of bird balls to shade the water, as we could have recycled them by giving them to Rec & Parks. But they would leach into the water and give it a funny taste.

As Harris-Calvin said earlier, there aren’t enough bird balls in the country to fill Ivanhoe Reservoir for months to come, let alone the much bigger Silver Lake. So Ivanhoe Reservoir will feed the community, and Silver Lake will be used only in emergencies. But um, PS, they will use the Silver Lake water for the community drinking water if they HAVE to. But who would know? ;)

Finally he got around to replying to my biggest and most insistent question to everyone in the state: why the delay in refilling Silver Lake, and why set the completely arbitrary date of June 1? (If you’re waiting for a LOGICAL answer to this, go pound sand. You’ll never get an answer except maybe: The answer is NO! And don’t ask me again!) Marty said:

Well, we had to pick up all those golf balls in the bottom. And there was a little mixer down there. It doesn’t look like much, but it clears the drain valves. We had to order a part, a banana blade, and it took a long long long long long long long long long long long time to come in, but that’s all done. It’s all done. So we’re on target with our goal date of June 1.