__________________________________________________________

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-are-

californias-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 LADWPs 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 Dodgers 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 LADWPs "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, its 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-how-

they-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 dont 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 LADWPs 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-are-californias-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-to-

conserve-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-lax3-

1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/v/t1.0-

9/1391972_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-balls-

they-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 companys 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 whod 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

doesnt 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-protect-

LA-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 didnt 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:

contact@awtti.com

mattinv@gmail.com sales.awtt@gmail.com sales@awtti.com ECC, LLC. P.O Box 15192

Wilmington, NC 28408

P: 910-799-4411

Email: sales@eccllc.us