Is the DWP Missing its Balls?

The Los Feliz Ledger reported recently that the DWP had started filling the Ivanhoe Reservoir with “bird balls,” orbs that are meant to block the sunlight and stop the chemical reaction that was causing bromate to build up the water (which forced the department to drain the adjacent Silver Lake reservoir.) It’s been hugely controversial, especially for those homeowners with million-dollar water views. Here’s the paper’s take on what the balls were doing to the area’s prime site:

Ivanhoe Reservoir is beginning to resemble a Chuck E Cheese ball pit as Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power officials have begun placing plastic “bird balls” in 100,000 ball increments on the reservoir’s surface to protect it from a harmful chemical reaction that could contaminate the city’s water supply.

I went by the other day to check it out, but I don’t see any balls. I looked. I stared. I lurked around from different angles, until the workers at the nearby preschool started giving me strange and somewhat hostile looks. Still no balls. I sent my husband by—he couldn’t find them either. So am I just blind? Are these balls smaller than the human eye can see? Or is the Ledger wrong?