Griffith Park, Interrupted

The last thing a blogger wants to do is write about him or herself, but sometimes it becomes necessary to use the “I” pronoun.

For instance, last week I wrote about a press release that NSF issued about the bird balls in Ivanhoe. Because the manufacturer, Orange Products, emailed it to me, I thought that meant that they paid for the NSF release.

Cat, but not LOLcat.

However, in response to my inquiry, Cheryl Luptowski of NSF called me today to clarify that OP did not request or pay for the PR. (I corrected this.) She said they issued it because they have been getting an unusually high number of inquiries about the bird ball test, and NSF wanted to put the facts out there. I asked her how many people contacted NSF, and she said 3 or 4 dozen. Most were email, but she suspects that the majority of the questions were from Los Angeles. (H. David Nahai, the Time-Waster Police called for you. They said to GET OFF THE COMPUTER and fix things.)

And here’s where I come in! I’m the only writer anywhere who actually chose to investigate what this NSF test really included. This means a lot of people have been reading my blog! Sadly, apparently 3 dozen of them didn’t trust me, and wanted to confirm the NSF test for themselves. That’s either cartoonist bigotry, which I highly doubt, or a hella lot of people concerned with water safety. As I searched Google to see if anyone else had written about NSF in connection with the bird balls, I came across this blog, 37signals.com. Some very interesting scientific comments there, but again, they are quoting my research with NSF.

Devil in the DWP?

So because of the number of questions, NSF issued the press release July 1. She also thanked me for bringing to their attention last week the fact that the temperature wasn’t listed in the release. She said most scientists would know, however, that meant that the balls were tested at ambient, or room temperature, which is 30 degrees C, or 73.4 degrees F. I asked if Orange Products could have requested the balls to be tested at a higher temperature. (I knew from my other conversations with her that they can, but just reconfirming.) She said yes, but they didn’t ask (or failed, as all failed tests are secret.)

The DWP of course had to stick its big fat nose into the release with a puffed up statement by Dr. Pankaj Parekh that says nothing of interest. I love what he said in LA Now, though:

As for leaching chemicals into the water, Parekh said that the balls, manufactured by Allentown, Pa.-based Orange Products, are environmentally safe to be placed in drinking water and will withstand the chlorine and sunlight.

Curious people.

He wrote this lie a month ago. Knowing full well that that wasn’t in the report at all, and the PR says only that the balls are tested at one temperature, for 17 days. Chlorine is not mentioned. In fact, no one except the manufacturer and the DWP had read the report at that time. But that’s what got me to call NSF myself that day to get the facts.

So I guess it all works out for the best, especially if you want the truth! Even if it comes from a cartoonist!

It’s not just H. David Nahai anymore.

At LA Observed, which I read at least a couple of times daily without fail, Kevin mentions Ron Kaye’s blog, RonKayeaLA.com. (Ron is the former editor of Daily News.) This is generous of him, because Ron totally disses Kevin for a suck-up bio on H. David Nahai that Kevin wrote for the July Los Angeles Magazine. Now, I like Kevin a whole lot, but I have to agree with Ron on this - this is definitely not a well-balanced article. (Maybe because most city magazines are rah-rah?) One point of Kevin’s story reads:

His pro-environment ethic, [Nahai says], “came to me as a result of a lot of reading.” [clip]

For Nahai, turning the agency into one of the environmental good guys is the fun part.

I’m glad he’s having fun. But 6 million plastic balls from new HDPE tossed into Ivanhoe and Elysian Reservoirs, HDPE which is only recycled 15% in this country, because it is so expensive to recycle, is called environmentally good?? How the DWP handled the bromate problem was lazy science; they dunked their own beakers in the water, tested them, and then gave up and ordered tons of plastic. Ugh.

Crow eyes Ivanhoe before the black balls of doom ruin it.

I think Ron is a better writer than I! He is clear and cogent. He writes about Kevin’s article:

…amazingly, the name of the man who actually runs the DWP, Brian D’Arcy, never appears.

D’Arcy is the head of the DWP union, the IBEW, and 95 percent of the utility’s workers take their orders from him, including most of the managers — a source of political cash and campaign workers that he uses ruthlessly to further his members’ interests and buy obedience from those who he helps get elected.

That’s why DWP salaries are so outlandish and rise 5 or 6 percent a year and why little happens at the utility without his approval.

That is especially true of the appointment of Nahai — a man without any experience as a manager or expertise in the field — to the $310,000 a year post. He’s pals with the boss, D’Arcy.

Brian, are you the guy behind the untested bird balls? This may still be Oz, but you are not the wizard I expected to see. Game on.

I actually added a category yesterday called DWP. That’s sad.

What does that say about me? Am I the nerdiest geek ever? Must I pay attention to the utility commission now?

Only H. David Nahai can save me now. By being the Superman I know he wants to be, and fixing up these egregious problems in Silver Lake. It’s never too late to admit you’re wrong, Mr. Nahai.

Ivanhoe Reservoir is almost half full of the bird balls of doom now. Not as dramatic as the DWP and Councilman Tom LaBonge throwing them around like a game, but dramatic and scary nonetheless.

I notice Marty Adams, “some kind of scientist,” “explained” them in CSSLR the other day. (I started calling him “some kind of scientist” because LaBonge’s office referred to him as that, but as things get more serious to the community, if not to the DWP, I’m going to drop that. He is really an engineer, (or was), and PR person for the LA DWP. He’s also a good friend of LaBonge.)

Click for better view. The white line is the dividing rope between the good and the bad. I love the red T painted on the tree - that might explain the bad trim job on this mature tree, as too often happens by the DWP unskilled tree hackers.

CSSLR titles Marty Adams letter to them: Bird Balls on Ivanhoe Reservoir are Non-Toxic — Questions About Ivanhoe, Bird Ball Safety, and DWP’s Intentions. Marty writes:

Many of you recall correctly that DWP agreed years ago not to cover Ivanhoe Reservoir. Has that changed and are the bird balls permanent? Absolutely not. As has been reiterated over the past few months, the bird balls do not and cannot meet the new federal regulations that are causing DWP to construct a new reservoir at Headworks and take Silver Lake and Ivanhoe out of service…

Some have asked “Why is Silver Lake okay to leave uncovered?” Practically speaking, it is impossible to cover Silver Lake Reservoir… The uncovered Silver Lake can be managed and is okay to use for these peak demands… Keep Reading »

This is a preview of my Upcoming Attraction blog post on: Hunting bats in Griffith Park!

That alone is probably enough to get your blood boiling, but one of my fellow bat hunters, Gerry Hans, co-chair of the PROS committee, noticed something else, or 2 something elses, in his bat searching area. I’m not sure I would have seen these toads myself (though I hope I would have. Did I ever mention that I have night blindness? Oh, yes, tripping over every tent spike in Girl Scout camp, that is me. But of course that has NOTHING to do with why I like bats.)

Photo by Gerry Hans. Toad climbs tree, may fall down.

Photo by Gerry Hans. Another toad also tries a tree run. Best of luck to both of them.

Here’s what Gerry had to say:

I saw three different toads in Brush Canyon when we were there doing bat survey. Two of them were climbing up the very steep bank on south side of road, about 200-400 ft above Dan’s herp study spot. It was fun watching them climb. The big one fell and started over a couple times. Here’s a shot of each of the climbers. They were about 50 ft from each other, doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. Taken with flash ~ 10 pm, July 2.

(He is referring to Dan Cooper’s animal searches from BioBlitz. I’m still really sorry I missed them, but that weekend was BookExpo.)

For the bat hunt & survey, there were about 15 volunteers, and we split up into small groups and went to various sections of the park with our Anabat recorders. These recorders pick up everything over 30 decibels, which is about the highest humans can hear. (not sure if I got that number correct, but you get the point.) Most of us didn’t see any bats. None of us heard them. But the recorders chirped anyway.

The quotation, “entertaining angels unawares,” kept coming to mind, so I looked it up:

Heb 13:2
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

I shall call these Angel Bats, and you may want to, too. More details to come.

My server company, Ipower, was down for 2 hours on Tuesday afternoon, and 14 hours from last night through this morning, so both my website and my blog were offline. What should I do?

This is the only server I’ve had, and they were recommended highly when I started. They’re still one of the biggest, if not the biggest out there. But when they migrated us to the “upgraded” servers this year, it got worse and worse, with outages and slow slow interface on vdeck. My free ftp is literally 10 times faster for moving files.

Now I’ll have to figure out how to move my domain, db, etc. Any suggestions on servers?

And if you think this was boring for you, think about me for a change.