The Times makes a joke about bird ball pollution in Silver Lake.*
Now the LA Times is FINALLY noticing what I’ve been talking about for months: the bird balls are coming, the bird balls are coming…and have arrived. They have pictures up there.
The writer compares it to Chuck E. Cheese balls. That’s funny, isn’t it? She also writes that Silver Lake residents will complain because the balls look ugly. Wow! Edgy! The LA Times really knows how to blog now!
Or not.
*Updated: The Times hasn’t “gotten around” to publishing my comment there yet, so because I think it’s a really good one, I’ll put it here, and good comment, Donna!
Updated once again. The Times won’t allow comments with one link in them. “Legal reasons” = selfish blogging. But they did use my comment, so abbreviated below now.
No, Jerry, DWP didn’t think this through. They didn’t hire any outside experts or chemists. They made up their own little beakers of water and lowered them up in down in water, and that’s their “chemistry.”
HDPE comes only from 2 places, the big oil companies: Exxon and Chevron. Both companies told me that the grade of plastic is very important, and literally changes as it’s being manufactured, and SHOULD be evaluated again. Wonder if DWP will do this! Bets, anyone?
And as a commenter mentioned above, the big joke on LA is that Silver Lake Reservoir shares water with Ivanhoe, with only a wall separating them, but Silver Lake will not have birdballs at all, so you’ll never know which water you’re getting! (One reservoir will leach the plastic, for 4 years; one will be natural, as Silver Lake has always been.) By the way, Councilman LaBonge is in charge of Ivanhoe, but Garcetti is in charge of SilverLake. Who’s your daddy?
And as usual, contact info for the dwp , which is unavailable in your bill, through the city, or through 311:
How to call the LADWP to complain about anything you feel like:
Phone and contact info for LADW:
(213) 367-1361 No busy signal! Real person answers.
email: joseph.ramallo@dwp.com
Donna Barstow
Griffith Park is the 2nd biggest park in the US, and I'm just the person to investigate it! I've lived here for over 25 years. I was part of the PROS Committee in Griffith Park Neighborhood Council and am on the Housing & Tenants Rights Committee in the Silver Lake NC. I'm in the LA Press Club, and you can find some of my articles in the LA Weekly and the Los Feliz Ledger. I'm a cartoonist for Parade Magazine, The New Yorker, LA Times, Slate, & most major media. Questions and contacts welcome.
3 Comments
Veronique
Hi Donna –
As I emailed you the moment you submitted your comment, there are some legal reasons why we can’t publish comments that have a url in them. I invited you to resubmit your comment without the url and said I would publish it right away.
I watched for it but you never did resubmit. I am, however, linking to your blog post, along with some others that pioneered the reservoir issue coverage, in my follow-up post tomorrow morning. And any time you have something you think would be good for linkage, please email me. We love to link out for the broadest view of what’s going on in LA, and who’s writing about it.
Veronique
Donna
Hi, Veronique,
I didn’t get your email til I just read this, because I have a multitude of them, and the one I used for the Times is one for possible ads, etc.
But thanks so much for answering me so Quickly! Now, that’s service!
I wouldn’t presume to send you my link, so thanks for saying that.
In your email, you make a good point: “I’m sorry you think Francisco would use your research without quoting or attributing to you.”
I don’t know him, nor was my comment directed towards any writer at the Times in particular. However, since I’ve done days of research on the issue of bromide/bromate, bird balls, and the shenanigans of the DWP in all this, I feel quite confident that any writer or researcher would have to come across and read my blog on these issues, and I don’t see the Times linking to many blogs at all.
And it happened with me just two weeks ago in an LA Times opinion online, where they used one of my personal photos and didn’t attribute to me (still haven’t!), so you can see why I have been a little skeptical up until now!
Dan
Thanks for your feedback Donna. My blog is new and doesn’t get much traffic so far. It’s funny because when I started writing that post, I thought of the “bird balls” as a solution to the chemical process going on in the reservoir…but by the end i was more concerned on whether it was a well thought out decision, which by your research it does not seem so.
Maybe it’s just because I’m a student in ASU’s College of Design, but from my understanding the color white reflects the most sunlight. (Black is actually matter absorbing all wavelengths…white reflects all wavelengths) So, and maybe plastic behaves differently, but it appears these balls will actually absorb heat instead of reflecting it.
Anyway, if I found out anything more I’ll be sure to hit you up.
PS. I heard that Silverlake was also contaminated, but was drained and cleaned instead of filled with balls…