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Cornelious Phillips watched on Thursday afternoon as brine made its way onto trucks in Northeast D.C., as part of a process he鈥檚 played a role in for over a decade.

Phillips runs the brine program through D.C.鈥檚 Department of Transportation, work that unfolds at the Street and Bridge Maintenance Facility in Northeast. Three to four days before winter weather arrives, he ensures the mixture is made correctly and loaded onto trucks to be spread throughout the city.

鈥淚t kind of gives us an opportunity to get ahead of the storm,鈥� Phillips said. 鈥淚t prevents the snow from bonding with the roadway, so it helps us get it up a lot easier.鈥�

The brine is made as long as a storm event doesn鈥檛 start out as rain, which would wash it away.

A hopper takes the salt, and there鈥檚 a machine that calculates salt percentages of the mixture, Phillips said. Once it reaches 23% salt, the mixture is moved to storage tanks.

The process creates 5,000 gallons of brine in an hour. About 45,000 gallons are needed to have enough to spread on roads across the entire city.

Hoses load the brine onto trucks, which hold about 2,000 gallons each. Each truck has assigned routes, and there are about 19 in total, but 鈥測ou can only load three at a time, so everything has to kind of be in sync.鈥�

鈥淭hey鈥檙e going out, hitting the streets one lane at a time,鈥� Phillips said. 鈥淵ou might have four-lane streets, you have to make four passes. Once they run out, they come back, get reloaded, they go back out, hit the next street or finish that street off, until they finish their route.鈥�

D.C. has two other places where brine can be stored, but Phillips said the Northeast facility is the only place it gets made and loaded at the same time.

During the worst winter he remembers, the city鈥檚 used about 260,000 gallons of brine.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a simple process,鈥� Phillips said. 鈥淚鈥檝e been doing this, 17 to 18 years, so I got it pretty down pat.