Shady Water - A research paper on the HDPE shade balls dumped into the Los Angeles reservoirs

__________________________________________________________ Shady Water: A look in to the Los Angeles shade balls used in the drinking reservoirs. ___________________________________________________________

Los Angeles is the second largest city in the United States, but it appears that they are the first city to receive national attention for using floating plastic shade balls in their drinking water reservoirs. The latest explanation from the county on why they use this controversial practice is “to “prevents water loss” that occurs from natural evaporation. Their response is controversial because from between 2008-2015 Los Angeles County has changed their story about the primary purpose behind the shade ball. The balls are rebranded from a “bird ball” product patented in the 2000s (source). Other names for the Bird Balls are Armor Balls™. The patent for plastic balls as a floating cover appeared in 2004 as a “pool heater” cover. You can see the patent here: https://www.google.com/patents/US20060005830

The black plastic bird ball is hollow, and filled with “potable water” too keep it from blowing away. The ball is the “hermetically sealed” in a chemical factory process.

In 2008 an article reads “The release of this batch of 20,000 balls into the 175-acre reservoir was the culmination of a $34.5 million initiative to protect the water supply that involved the deployment of a whopping 96 million plastic balls into the water.” Source: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/plastic-balls-arecalifornias-water-savers We will explore the history of these balls in Los Angeles, try our best with the information available, to give the readers an overview of the process and history of Los Angeles County and outline the LADWP’s various affiliations with chemical plants, who have been intentionally dumping over 90,000,000 plastic shade balls into at least 4 of the Los Angeles County drinking reservoirs.

The four drinking water reservoirs that we know are using float balls are:

The Elysian Reservoir Grand View Dr Los Angeles, CA 90012 GPS: 34.078928, -118.230885 This reservoir is near the LA Dodger’s stadium (approximate) 40 feet next to the 110 highway. Surrounded by tall barbed wire and guarded. The Van Norman Bypass Reservoir / The Yarnell Debris Basin

Golden State Fwy Sylmar, CA 91342 34.304676, -118.480988 The RT5 LADWP reservoirs next to the LAPD training facilities. Can be seen by the road. The Silver Lake Reservoir, Los Angeles CA 90039 (No longer a drinking water source) Location 4: TBD - we have read there are four locations and we are still researching the last location. Other locations the shade balls have been used: Shade balls have also been used in the City of Ivanhoe and the Las Virgenes Water District

___________________________________________________________ Where does the water in the reservoirs come from? ___________________________________________________________

“The Los Angeles Aqueduct system, comprising the Los Angeles Aqueduct (Owens Valley aqueduct) and the Second Los Angeles Aqueduct, is a water conveyance system, built and operated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.[6] The Owens Valley aqueduct was designed and built by the city's water department, at the time named The Bureau of Los Angeles Aqueduct, under the supervision of the department's Chief Engineer William Mulholland.[7] The system delivers water from the Owens River in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains to Los Angeles, California.”

___________________________________________________________ Why Shade Balls? ___________________________________________________________

According to what we have on record, Los Angeles County began dumping the shade balls into the water in 2008. So far we do not know if they tested the shade balls prior to 2008. The LADWP officials claimed introducing the shade balls into the water would to stop the sunlight from reacting with the chlorine in the water, which creates a known carcinogen, bromate. Los Angeles County bought the balls from Orange Products Inc. in Pennsylvania, and later on they began publishing several other chemical companies, which are now in debate. How did they get the 96,000,000 balls to the various reservoirs?: The millions of plastic black carbon dyed HDPE plastic balls were dumped from large dump trucks down the cement sides of the reservoirs. In some instances large white bags were filled and various workers helped to untie and dump the bags down the sidewalls of the reservoirs. Los Angeles County is very much like a desert climate, and these areas have very littler or no natural shade, and are exposed to full sunlight every day. The shade balls are outdoors and are fully exposed to the sunlight and elements 365 days a year. Over the years Los Angeles County and LADWP’s "official" story has evolved and mutated and it has become hard to decipher what the true reason for these balls is, besides to make money for a few individual players in the transactions. In 2008 the press and the Los Angeles County officials were officially stating the black balls were deposited in the water to stop bird waste and the chemical reactions. Today, the official story has evolved to sounds like a solution to Los Angeles’ current problems, which is the drought. It was stated "these shade balls are to help stop the drought" and save water. Overall Los Angeles spent $34,500,000 US dollars on this product.

The writers of this paper are currently attempting to research the money trail and procure the paper documents to show which vendors were paid. Source: http://38.media.tumblr.com/3137c0919044e90265f433a9d459ec86/tumblr_inline_nb71v46aLG1 sk7xj8.jpg This is where the story gets noticeably suspicious: In August of 2015 Los Angeles County and the press are saying a newly mentioned company called XavierC, LLC or XavierC.net, which was never listed in the 2008-2013 press releases, is now making the plastic shade balls. The XavierC, LLC name presumably comes from the name of one of the company's business consultants Xavier Castillo. It is stated in some articles Xavier Castillo is a war veteran, and it appears in some photos he may use a wheelchair. The photos may have showed him testing the chairs, it’s not conclusive that he uses a wheelchair. According to on of the “brain children” of the shade balls, Sydney Chase, she said she met the vet and wanted to hire him to reward him for his service. This new company XavierC.net is a company affiliated with Smartoil.homestead.com. Both sites have virtually no web presence or professional web presence. Both sites also steal a lot of images from other sites on Google, and the photos they have from Sydney Chase and Xavier Castillo are heavily doctored photos, that were created from other photos on the web. XacierC.net was not the "official" company at least not the past 7 years. If you read all the articles over the years it was pointing to Orange Products Inc. Another interesting point that creates confusion is Orange Product did not call them shade balls. They called their product "4 inch black hollow float balls". The samples that Orange Products Inc. sent out to journalists did not actually match the photos Los Angeles and XavierC.net had on their site. The company also makes these balls as "bird balls" to float in sewage, run off, and waste water. They were not created for drinking water. The shade balls are also called recycle 7 on their logo, but according to one plastic experts we hear from, HDPE balls are not 7.

In the various press releases there is misleading information about the company that makes the shade balls. When you read the press releases the main photo is 3 photoshop retouched men from India.

We see in this photo's caption that the factory is in Azusa, CA. This is overall a confusing photo. Why aren't the people who are in charge of the shade balls in the photos. Or are they hiding them out for the press? According to press and reports there are 4 or more sources making the shade balls. The stories are inconsistent. We spoke with Orange Products Inc. [photos of email coming soon]. When several Orange Products Inc. staff and they gladly sent us samples. So how much money did Sydney Chase and Xavier Castillo make from the $30,000,000 spent on this whole thing. I also wonder if the "new company" XavierC.net was made up to actually hide where the $30,000,000 went on all that petroleum derivative plastic. The number's don't really add up with how bad the companies sites are, and how well hidden Sydney and Xavier seem, for such prominent business people. If you are a journalist or know someone from Los Angeles County who could publish all this it needs to get out to the public.

There are more than 2-3 people splitting the $30,000,000 cash and I am sure there were people involved in this that were paid off to cover the health effects of HDPE and long term sun exposure in the drinking water. Imagine how many "leaders" or "decision makers" or city "officials" were called into this process and the "water saving project", and got a percent of profit, finder's fee, commission, etc. There is one final nail for this whole story and that is the fact that it appears no health tests were done before Los Angeles County dumped the $30,000,000 worth of plastic shade balls into the water. On all the sites of the people involved, there is zero data on how safe to drink this black HDPE in sunlight is. In conclusion, there is very little accountability by Los Angeles County in this, and more citizens from that area should look into their families water supply. If anyone has any more information on this as it unfolds, or has heard or seen anything suspicious please post comments and repost this or share on your social media outlets.

______________________________________________ Companies Involved in shade ball manufacturing: ______________________________________________

(Please note: "XavierC LLC" has two websites as of today)

XavierC, LLC - http://www.XavierC.net XavierC, LLC PART 2? - http://www.xaviercllc.com (626) 808-7485 Smartoil - http://smartoil.homestead.com/AboutUs.html

Artisan Screen Printing - http://www.artisanscreen.com/ (Blow molding) Orange Products Inc. - http://www.orangeproducts.com/ (many articles state Orange Products Inc.) An additional site that is related and we feel should be published but we are not sure how the money trail is related is here: Water Conservation and Management co - http://www.waterconservationandmanagement.com/

Also note, none of these sites show any safety data, permits for drinking water, links to data, research, results from studies, or cite the safety of these, or show FDA approval for shade balls (bird balls) to be in drinking water.

Article on manufacturing: http://www.dailynews.com/environment-and-nature/20150812/what-are-shade-balls-and-howthey-help-save-los-angeles-water This article mentions both companies involved, and the amount of balls each company contributed. XavierC's archived 2014 site: If you check out the XavierC.net on the internet archive and this is how their 2014 site used to look (a lot of it is has been scrubbed from web and we don’t know why) in January 2014 https://web.archive.org/web/20140103115200/http://www.xavierc.net/ It is ironic that in 2014 they redid their site because it was at this time on the internet the community really started questioning the HDPE and black carbon tar coloring used, it was getting a lot more traction and you have to wonder is this why XavierC.net is now the "official" company?

________________________________________________

WHO IS THE RETIRED DR. BRIAN WHITE OR THE “BRAIN CHILD” OF SHADE BALLS. __________________________________________________ Disclaimer: We are having difficulty locating pictures and credentials of this person there is very little online about LADWP’s retired Dr.Brian White. He appears to have retired immediately after the shade balls were dumped into the drinking water. There are various conflicting stories about the shade balls. Some articles say that Dr. Brian White is the brain child of the project: “Shade balls aren't a new concept; they've been used in open-air reservoirs in Los Angeles since 2008. They're the brainchild of Dr. Brian White, a now-retired biologist with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, who said he got the idea when he learned about the application of “bird balls” that were placed in ponds along airfield runways to keep birds from congregating too close to planes.” Read more: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/plastic-balls-arecalifornias-water-savers#ixzz3mlwawxK7

________________________________________________ Who is "Sydney Chase" the 2nd "brain child" of shade balls __________________________________________________

Meet the poorly photo shopped or possibly manufactured "people" behind the shade balls deal: Who is "Sydney Chase" who appears as the brain child for the plastic shade ball. Sydney Chase' bio at http://smartoil.homestead.com/AboutUs.html online

"Sydney Chase, President

Sydney Chase, states the company vision is to be the leader in research, design and manufacturing solutions to reduce evaporation costs for reservoir owners. Ms Chase has 30 years of manufacturing, operations and business development experience in metals, plastics and polymer concrete products and materials and contributed to over $85 million of products sales in the last 12 years."

It has been said about shade balls that "this is a money grab for sure". They have been pouring tens of millions of these plastic balls in reservoirs for years under the cover of "bird balls": http://la.curbed.com/archives/2008/06/balls_out_ivanh.php. Some articles cite Dr. Brian White as the brainchild but then other articles cite "The balls are the brain child of Sydney Chase, who got the concept brain storm one day and then set out to make it a reality. Chase left a 30 year career in the manufacturing, operations, and business development of plastics and other commodities, and then sold her house to raise the funds needed to start XavierC" see source http://interestingengineering.com/shade-balls-used-toconserve-water-in-california. Here is a photo of Sydney Chase when she worked for Armorcast : http://www.labusinessjournal.com/photos/2010/sep/27/2250/ Armorcast Products Company's makes large plastic objects from petroleum based plastic chemicals and their site can be viewed here: http://www.armorcastprod.com/ Armorcast archived web site from 2007: http://web.archive.org/web/20070202094305/http://www.armorcastprod.com/ Armorcast Address: 13230 Saticoy Street North Hollywood, CA 91605 Phone: 818.982.3600 Fax: 818.982.7742

Vice President of Armorcast meeting with ex mayor of LA: https://scontent-lax31.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/v/t1.09/1391972_10202020185207608_1828412133_n.jpg?oh=27f219795c71a9159befaaa051cc357 8&oe=56A42917

[Sydney Chase](https://www.flickr.com/photos/51665751@N07 /4984550198/in/photostream/) while she worked at Armorcast. "My conjecture is that Armorcast and Sydney chase started XavierC as front company to receive the contract to make the balls and used the XavierC to get tax breaks they get for hiring women and minorities." Sydney from http://smartoil.homestead.com/AboutUs.html

Video interview with Sydney Chase: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-11/who-s-behind-the-96-million-shade-ballsthey-just-rolled-into-l-a-s-reservoirs-

______________________________ Who is "Xavier Castillo" the War Veteran ______________________________

On one site Xavier is listed as a disabled veteran, here: http://interestingengineering.com/shade-balls-used-to-conserve-water-in-california/ From the "wounded warriors" project.

“The second reason is built into the company’s name. The “Xavier” is Xavier Castillo, who worked for 18 years in information technology at the Pomona-based Casa Colina physical rehabilitation center. Castillo, 47, survived a car accident at 27 that left him a quadriplegic. He and Chase met by chance four years ago, and he came on board when he learned she wanted to hire disabled veterans who’d been having trouble finding work elsewhere. Factory work itself would be difficult for many of them, so Chase envisioned a company at which vets could perform administrative, marketing, and other tasks on a computer. Castillo controls his own computer using his neck and shoulder muscles, Chase says.”

According to XavierC.net (yes… a company named after the consultant…) it says this bio about Xavier: "Xavier Castillo, Independent Consultant Prior to his appointment Xavier Castillo spent 18 years at Casa Colina Centers for Physical Rehabilitation as Information Technology specialist. One of main company goals is to aggressively use small and disadvantaged partners. Mr. Castillo is responsible for making that happen and in doing so volunteers his time to develop these opportunities. He currently volunteers his time to the XavierC LLC promoting the company in the handicapped community and proving opportunities." This appeared here: http://smartoil.homestead.com/AboutUs.html His photo was proven online with forensics to be shopped from several photos:

(We have spoken to several hundred people who agree the photo is shopped. We also have proof this has been cut and pasted from several different photo sources). 2007 photo of "Xavier" http://www.rehabpub.com/2007/10/enabling-access/

Is Xavier Castillo really a quadriplegic? Some articles state that Xavier Castillo is a quadriplegic. Yet these photos clearly show him reaching his hands straight out. Which means that he has use of his arms. In other photos he is moving his arms too so we are wondering if he is truly a quadriplegic or a made up consultant actor in this whole fiasco. Also Xavier is being labeled a disabled veteran, which is misleading considering he became disabled after a car accident at age 47, and we can not locate his military records or records of his car crash.

On this 2007 site you see Xavier in a giant electric wheelchair. Is he this severely handicapped or is he helping demo the product? http://www.rehabpub.com/2007/10/enabling-access/ According to anonymous internet posters, "Xavier Castillo" works here; http://www.casacolina.org/About-Casa-Colina/Contact-Us.aspx . But we have had no verification of this yet. ______________________________________________________ Marcie Edwards, LADWP General Manager _______________________________________________________

“Shade balls are a great example of how engineering meets common sense,” Marcie Edwards, LADWP General Manager, said. “Our water system has significantly changed since William Mulholland built it more than 100 years ago. As we make updates, we are mindful to be wise and practical with our investments. Shade balls are an affordable and effective way to comply with regulations, and helps us continue to deliver the best drinking water to our customers.” Looks like she has been working for the power company since she was a teenager typist. This doesn’t depict her as having a heavy science background. This is from her profile: “Marcie began working for the LADWP in 1976 as a 19-year-old clerk typist. She gained experience in a variety of Power System positions, starting in steam plant operations and then gaining valuable experience in Power System Operations. She was elevated to energy control

center manager and worked her way up to assistant general manager for marketing and customer service business units.” Source

______________________________________________________ HDPE PLASTIC BREAKDOWN IN SUNLIGHT AND WATER _______________________________________________________

Links: Full scientific back documents online, but compiling now, please be patient. Email us with any useful documents. How do Armor Balls stop UV light?” “Special HDPE formulation and ultraviolet stabilizers protect from the degrading effect of sunlight.” http://www.awtti.com/armor_balls_aqua_275_cover.php ________________________________________ HEALTH CONCERNS & THEORIES ________________________________________

The Release of Phthalates from the black balls theory: “Phthalates are a family of chemicals used in plastics and many other products. Phthalates are a group of chemicals used to soften and increase the flexibility of plastic and vinyl. Polyvinyl chloride is made softer and more flexible by the addition of phthalates. Phthalates are used in hundreds of consumer products” May 13, 2015

Do the shade balls cause bacteria?: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3204873/How-100-million-shade-balls-brought-protectLA-s-reservoir-evaporating-fact-bacterial-nightmare.html

Theory from internet researcher: "Shade balls are made to get hormones into the water because people are moving away from plastic containers, and, to PROMOTE evaporation: when the wind blows the film of water on a HOT black surface is rapidly evaporated, lowering, further, the reservoirs. It's a two for. You get more feminized, complicit males and you move faster toward the depopulation Agenda. Furthermore, you get additional bump in cancers as the UV radiation breaks down the plastics into their original constituents. It's a Three for One! Bravo Club of Romers." There is a theory these balls are actually heating the water, not cooling it: http://www.ehow.com/way_5398569_diy-solar-swimming-pool-heaters.html There is a site online that teaches people to use these same “shade balls” or “bird balls” in their swimming pools to heat the water up. We have to wonder is there conclusive evidence that these balls are cooling the water down?

The Club of Rome theory: Is "a group of world citizens, sharing a common concern for the future of humanity." It consists of current and former heads of state, UN bureaucrats, high-level politicians and government officials, diplomats, scientists, economists and business leaders from around the globe.[1] It raised considerable public attention in 1972 with its report The Limits to Growth. The club states that its mission is "to act as a global catalyst for change through the identification and analysis of the crucial problems facing humanity and the communication of such problems to the most important public and private decision makers as well as to the general public."[2] Since 1 July 2008, the organization has its headquarters in Winterthur, Switzerland.

________________________________________ FORENSICS ANALYSIS OF PHOTOS OF SYDNEY CHASE AND XAVIER CASTILLO ________________________________________

“This entire site is clearly a really, really poorly executed fake. As shown above, the woman's photo is proven to be a fake. We have metadata on the image that shows us the Version of Photoshop used, the document id's within photoshop at the time of creation, modification, and the original, again, of the woman's image. I had a few more minutes to kill, so I pulled the metadata from the Man's photo this time, and a did a side-by-side comparison here -- the data of interest is in the highlighted yellow boxes near the bottom:”

9/24/15 5:41 PM The left-half of the image is the woman from the AboutUs page on the smartoil site. I've proven this to be a (very poor) photoshop job. Compare the metadata in the left-hand yellow highlighted box to that in the right. Both images created within 4 minutes of each other, between 7:36pm and 7:40pm Pacific Standard Time (which is GMT-8000, i.e. California in pre-Daylight Savings Time months. After DST would be PDT) on January 8th, 2014. Both images were created using identical versions of Photoshop CS 5.1 on Windows. For the next property of importance highlighted, let me just paste Adobe's own definition of the fields of importance from their XMP Spec Documentation Part 1 & XMP Spec Documentation Part 2 Property Type

Description Document Ancestors

unordered array

1 If the source document for a copy-and-paste or place operation has a document ID, that ID is added to this list in the destination document's XMP. Derived From Resource Reference A reference to the resource from which this one is derived. 1 This means that when an image is copied and pasted from within one PS image edit window into another separate PS edit image window, the ID of the image being copied (from), and pasted to the second (to), is added to the Document Ancestors field of the second (to). What does this tells us about the image of the Woman? That at least 1 image was copied and pasted onto another in this image, then the image was saved. What does this tell us about the image of the man? That at least 2 images were copied and pasted onto another image (the same image), the image was saved, modified (derived from), and then saved again. Another final point is that if you take a look at all but 1 of the GUID's in both sets of yellow highlighted boxes, only the first ~9-11 characters of the 32 character hex strings generated by photoshop "randomly" actually have any variance. This is a known issue with the random number generator's in many older operating systems. It results in exactly this behavior: random numbers generated on a single system or sometimes multiple systems did not differ greatly enough to cause enough variance in the values generated, resulting in more easily predictable strings being generated than should have been. This was most notably a problem for bitcoins early on, resulting in the double-spend transactions problem. I know this post has been quite long already, so I'll finish up quickly with

another series of comparison images, showing that every other image on the Smartoil landing page was stolen from another website. Each of these images are on the index page from Smartoil, and included with a screenshot of the webpage in the browser window is a screenshot of a portion of the Google image search results for that image (for size purposes I didn’t include the full page of Google image results): SOURCE: https://www.reddit.com/r/shadeballs/comments/3m98pv/further_forensic_proof_the_shade_ball_ web_sights/ Other contacts & research: Advanced Water Treatment Technologies Inc. Corporate headquarters 515W 3rd Place The Dalles, OR 97058 Ph #1: 541-716-5255* Ph #2: 541-399-0636* Fax: 503-214-8340 * Email: [email protected]

[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ECC, LLC. P.O Box 15192 Wilmington, NC 28408 P: 910-799-4411 Email: [email protected]