World News for Students of English

19-08-2015 15:00

It looks like a massive kids’ play park, but the reason for these black plastic balls has nothing to do with fun. The Las Virgenes County water district in Los Angeles has decided to put the balls on top of the water to block the sunlight from hitting it. The so-called shade balls are the brainchild of David Pedersen.

“The balls, really, they’re intended for three reasons: they help to cut down on evaporation, that’s helped us save water; and then it also helps to prevent algae from growing in the reservoir, so it improves our water quality; and then finally as a side benefit, it helps keep the birds off the surface and birds do their thing and that causes a problem.”

This week, the mayor of Los Angeles released 20 thousand black balls into the Los Angeles reservoir.

California is in its fourth year of a catastrophic drought that has led the state to issue a series of steps to reduce water consumption.

The shade balls work for two decades. They cost 36 cents each and are expected to save some 300 million gallons (1,135,624 cubic metres) of water annually.

Difficult words: brainchild (a person’s idea), intend (to have a purpose), evaporation (the act of evaporating – when water changes to gas), alga, pl. algae (a simple, green aquatic plant), birds do their thing (when the birds poop), drought (when it rarely rains), annually (every year).

Source: www.ondemandnews.com