BOYLE — The Millview Arena staff in Boyle will have to get creative making ice for a while.
First, in October a toilet flooded leading to asbestos remediation and repairs, which are still ongoing and now one of the ice plant condenser towers has failed so currently both are off to prevent any further damage to the ice plant.
“First, an upstairs toilet was plugged and flooded out one upstairs washroom and the two washrooms underneath it,” said CAO Warren Griffin in an e-mail Jan. 6. “There was some required asbestos remediation prior to the repair work being started. The repairs are underway and hopefully are completed soon.”
The village decided to replace the current toilets since the work is being done so there will be a minimal cost but otherwise is should be all covered by the insurance claim Griffin said.
“The last update we got from the insurance company is they hope to be done in two weeks,” he informed council at their regular meeting Jan. 5.
For now, one toilet upstairs and in one of the dressing rooms are being used but with a tournament looming some portables may need to be brought in if the repairs are incomplete.
“If we do get things going again and say in two weeks if we've determined we're going to have to use the portals simply because we need the fifth dressing room (for the tournament), we'll make do if we need to, but it hasn't been our year,” he said.
As if that wasn’t enough, the first week of January brought the failing of one of the ice plant condenser towers which required the other tower to be shut down to prevent damage.
"We are waiting on parts, as it is an older system, but we are experiencing the same problems everyone else has with supply shortages due to COVID,” said Griffin. “Unfortunately, this does affect our ability to make ice.”
He informed the council there will be no usage during the week to allow staff time to build the ice.
“The decision is during the week will be on-ice usage and we will try to build up the ice,” he said. “We have to treat it as a natural ice surface which is very difficult to do seeing that we can't just open a back door and leave it open.”
It led to Boyle minor hockey having to reschedule one game this past weekend to accommodate staff.
“There were originally five games scheduled for this (past) weekend,” said Griffin. “(We asked) minor hockey to reschedule one of them on Saturday to give us a two-hour gap in between the other two slots and we will try to go through with minimal floods and just ice scrapes and we will try to get four out of five games. And if that works, then we will spend the whole next week trying to build it back up for the (coming) weekend.”
This is even worse news with the coming tournament as there is no portable ice to rent.
“Hopefully, we can get things running by then,” he said. “In two week's time, minor hockey was planning to host a tournament but if I don’t have parts that's not happening.”
