The Effect Of Evaporation In California

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Due to the decreased rainfall in the past five years for the state of California, drastic measures have gone into effect to save every last drop of fresh water available to the population. According to 119 years of records, the average rainfall per year for the state has also been the worst ever recorded. With such a large decrease of rainfall, California has began community based projects to help save water by setting rules within households and schools for the amount of water that can be used daily. Water related uses also account for a sizeable amount of electricity, along with natural gas and fuels that are burnt each year. Besides the community based projects, California has began to turn towards major water sources and reservoirs with projects to decrease evaporation in those sources of water. …show more content…

The city of Los Angeles devised a plan in mid to late 2015 to drop roughly ninety six million “shade balls” into the reservoir in order to decrease evaporation. Covering an area of 175-acres, the reservoirs 3.3 billions of water were completely covered in black, circular shade balls. The 3.3 billion gallons of water are also reportedly able to supply the city of Los Angeles with up to three weeks of fresh drinking water. City officials believe the shade balls will cool the water, and block the sun from evaporating water from the reservoir. This also supposedly helps decrease the growth of algae, bacteria, and the ability of chemical reactions to happen. This effort to reduce evaporation within the largest reservoir in the state of California was created by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

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