THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 9, 1995 TAG: 9509090266
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY FRANCIE LATOUR, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Long : 108 lines
The cheerful lilt in her voice is almost calming, like a mother gently breaking bad news.
``Hello,'' the daily recording begins. ``The chloride level in the drinking water from the Northwest River Water Treatment Plant for September the 8th is 1137. The sodium level is 569.''
That means another morning without coffee made with tap water. Another day you leave the shower with a briny film on your body.
It's like pouring salt on a wound. Literally.
Her voice continues . . .
``If you receive your water from the Northwest River Water system,'' she says, ``which is high in chlorides and tastes salty, you can go to five fire stations to receive low-chloride water. . . ''
Meet Ray M. Prophett, the woman behind Chesapeake's chloride hot line.
For thousands of residents here, Prophett's voice is a vital link between the complex processes at the city's water treatment plant and the stuff that comes out of their spigots.
But for the past two months, she has also been a dispatcher of some pretty depressing news: Prophett, 57, is responsible for telling residents just how salty their water is from day to day.
With even-keeled serenity, her voice has charted chloride and sodium contents that have soared to their highest levels in a decade.
Drought and southeasterly winds are at the heart of the problem.
Without a heavy drenching, there is no way to flush out the Northwest River, which has been the city's main source of water since 1980. At the same time, the winds push saltier water upstream from the Currituck Sound into the treatment plant's intake pipes, inundating the water supply.
Chloride levels since July have climbed steadily, peaking at 1,612 parts per million on Sept. 2, more than six times higher than the 250-parts-per-million federal threshold for salty taste. The sodium content has hit 806 parts per million, or 35 times what doctors recommend for patients on severely salt-restricted diets.
As the levels soared, residents have turned to Prophett's daily readings. She started out with 260 callers in May; in July, 581 dialed in. The complete August records aren't in yet, but the city had registered 641 calls in the first two weeks.
That's got to add up to at least fifteen minutes of fame.
As secretary to Public Utilities Director Amar Dwarkanath, Prophett has been putting her voice to tape every weekday morning for the past ten years. To most, reading the same announcement for a decade could get dull. But Prophett doesn't seem to mind. She asks only one thing of the people she serves: Don't kill the messenger.
``Yes, that is me on the machine,'' Prophett admitted with hesitation when a caller recognized her voice.
One year, a cashier even recognized Prophett's voice while she was Chistmas shopping.
When you're responsible for informing people that they really don't want that Big Gulp or cool glass of iced tea, revealing your identity can be an occupational hazard.
Prophett's career on the hot line began in the summer of 1985, when chloride and sodium levels surged to their highest points in the city's history. No one can remember who first had the idea to create the hot line, Dwarkanath said. But when it came time to act on the suggestion, he assigned the task to Prophett.
``The first time I put it on,'' Prophett said, ``I told my mom and dad to call in and listen to it. My dad used to be an announcer for stock car races in North Carolina and all over the place, so I used to tell him I was a chip off the old block.
``I thought maybe he would give me some pointers. But he never did.''
Since those humble beginnings, Prophett said, recording the chloride updates have become as routine as getting up in the morning and brushing her teeth. She hardly ever reads from the written announcement anymore. And she has perfected her reassuring, ``there-are-worse-things-in-the-world'' tone.
``It does sound cheerful, doesn't it?'' Prophett said of her daily message. ``Well, you might as well be upbeat about it, because the bottom line is, it's bad news for a lot of people.''
Prophett is among the first recipients of her own bad news: A resident of Chesapeake since age 8, she now lives in Great Bridge, which has the city's saltiest water. She buys bottled water, even for her two dogs, Missy and Sister.
Western Branch gets its water from Portsmouth, and South Norfolk's supply comes from Norfolk, neither of which have salt problems. Deep Creek residents so far have gotten treated, non-salty water from a 318-million gallon aquifer the city created in 1990 to provide relief in case of future salty water crises. But that supply is more than half gone.
A thin slice of neighborhoods between Dominion Boulevard and the Fernwood Farms area gets a blend of salty water and water from the aquifer.
That leaves about 90,000 residents in Greenbrier and Great Bridge with nothing but high-chloride, high-sodium water.
``I read the numbers into the machine and I think, `Gosh? Is it that high?' '' Prophett said in her office at City Hall. ``But I guess the cheerfulness is because there's hope in there. We know that as soon as it rains, the levels will go down, and we'll have good water again. When you see the report, and you know it's gone down and you can announce it, it's such a sigh of relief. Because when the chloride levels are low, I think we have some of the best-tasting water around.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by STEVE EARLEY, Staff
Ray M. Prophett, the voice of Chesapeake's water hot line, hopes
people won't hate the messenger for her salty updates.
Color chart of salt content since July 16
KEYWORDS: WATER QUALITY CHESAPEAKE WATER DEPARTMENT by CNB