No, that 175-acre reservoir full of black balls is not the World's Biggest Ball Pit: it's Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti's latest attempt to counteract the worst drought Californians have seen in decades.

On August 10, Garcetti orchestrated a massive 20,000 ball dump into the reservoir, which services thousands of Angelenos. According to a press release issued by the city, the shade balls are a "cost-effective way to reduce evaporation each year by nearly 300 million gallons, enough to provide drinking water for 8,100 people for a full year."

The polyethylene balls — technically known as "shade balls" — work to absorb sunlight and curb evaporation. They also double as a cleaning tool, ridding the water of unwanted dirt by keeping an admixture of sunlight, chlorine and bromide in the water from turning into an oxoanion called bromate, which is also a carcinogen and therefore, dangerous to human health.

Other useful shade ball benefits? Diverting animals from the reservoir water and stymieing algae growth.

This isn't the first time shade balls have been deposited into the reservoir: as of now, the spherical H2O protectors number around 9.6 million.

Innovations to stave off California's months-long drought are now more or less a necessity; the Best Coast bastion has been in a declared State of Emergency since January of this year. Californians have been doing their best to chip in and aid in the crisis: in June, water use dropped 27.3 percent, going above and beyond the 25 percent goal officiated by Governor Edmund G. Brown.  

Check out the ball(s) drop in the video below.

Via Gizmodo