I took a boat through 96 million black plastic balls on the Los Angeles reservoir to find out why they’re there. The first time I heard about shade balls the claim was they reduce evaporation. But it turns out this isn’t the reason they were introduced.
Not what I expected! Long story short, to prevent formation of a carcinogenic chemical.
Visually it looks super cool, like a gigantic ball pit. The balls naturally raft into grids that look like different textures from above.
