Wentzville, Lake Saint Louis Street Crews Prepare for Snow and Ice

Wentzville

Wentzville Public Works Director Doug Lee told Patch that city road crews would begin pre-treating at 7 a.m. Thursday.

First priority will be hills and bridges.

With the storm not expected until 10 a.m. or 11 am., Lee said, plans were to go to 12-hour shifts at 11 a.m.

A lot would depend on just how the storm developed. "At the moment, we're right on the line of the mix," Lee said.

When asked how well the city was stocked with salt, Lee replied, "The bins are full of salt."

Lake Saint Louis

Derek Koestel, Public Works Director for the City of Lake Saint Louis told Patch that he had a small crew out Wednesday night to pre-treat the streets with liquid beet juice brine on major routes and salt on some of the lesser traveled roads.

Koestel said that the city will start staffing around-the-clock operations at 6 a.m.Thursday morning, running two 12-hour shifts. 

"We don’t expect the road conditions will be particularly difficult to deal with," Koestel said. "Problems such as downed trees from freezing rain could present a more significant challenge."

Lake Saint Louis is trying something new this year, using beet juice along with the salt and salt brine used to melt ice and snow.

Koestel said that while his crews haven’t really had the chance yet this winter to test the beet juice with heavy snow or particularly cold weather, it appeared to be very effective.  

"We treated our salt stockpile with beet juice which appears to melt snow and ice on the streets much faster than plain salt. The maintenance staff are big fans of the stuff," he said.

The real test would come, Koestel said, in extremely cold weather. Under those conditions, beet juice treated salt would be expected to work at temperatures when salt alone is ineffective.