As residents across the St. Louis region continue to dig out from this weekend’s massive dump of snow, one local business leader is already thinking about what will likely surface once the snow eventually melts away: potholes.
It’s something that tends to happen regardless of what kind of snow and related weather conditions blow through the region, says Lindsey Hermes, CEO of BioSpan Technologies. The company specializes in products for asphalt and concrete made from agricultural oils and other polymers that go below the surface to improve a roadway’s flexibility and durability, as well as repel moisture, chemicals, and other materials that can cause deterioration.
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“I joke that we sell Botox for roads, but that’s what we’re best known for,” she says.
On its own, snow isn’t necessarily the culprit. It’s what happens in its aftermath that causes issues, Hermes says.
“Snow, when it melts and it gets into the pavement matrix, what happens when it freezes? It expands. It actually expands by 9 percent when it freezes,” she says.
With the sun out and beginning to melt some of the snow, Hermes expects it to penetrate into various roadway surfaces and wreak havoc, especially as St. Louis is in for continued frigid weather, with temperatures forecasted to stay below freezing for the next week, with overnight lows in the low single digits.
“It’s going to happen,” she says. “That freeze-thaw explosion is why we see craters appear overnight after a cold snap, and it’s really important that we keep much of that moisture out.”
While this year’s “light and fluffy” snow is quite different from the “slush that we saw last year,” Hermes calls its lightness “deceptive.”
“It drifts easier, it requires more aggressive plowing, and when those plow blades hit a brittle, frozen surface, that’s basically a recipe for surface damage that opens the doors for more potholes later,” she says. Plus, persistently cold temperatures during and after the storm render traditional road salt less effective, forcing “crews to use more aggressive chemicals or abrasives like sand or grit, and that can further degrade the binder in asphalt, which is essentially the glue that holds the road together.”
It’s why Hermes advocates governments be proactive about maintenance instead of just reacting when something breaks or a big hole forms. And this is a shift she is noticing within the industry, especially when demonstrating her products.
“When you can demonstrate that you don’t have to have as many issues, and it’s literally a side by side comparison, people get excited about rolling out expanded preventative maintenance programs,” Hermes says.
That excitement is something she expects to tap into, having just taken over as CEO of BioSpan Technologies a few weeks ago.
“I’m feeling honored that I get to carry forward this legacy that my parents started 33 years ago. And I’m also excited to take BioSpan into the next level of growth and do it my way. I get to honor my parents’ legacy, and I get to put my mark on it, too,” Hermes says.
To that end, she’s looking to double or triple the company’s revenue this year, after seeing what she says is renewed energy from existing and new partners in the past 18 months. The company is looking to push into other countries, starting with a full translation of its website and training materials into Spanish and later Japanese.
“I have a lot of new prospects that are excited about what we’re doing. They see a gap in the market that only BioSpan can fill,” Hermes says.
