Will Rec Center have ice?

By Cathy DeDe, Chronicle Managing Editor

As hockey season nears, it’s not clear when or even whether the Glens Falls Recreation Center will have ice.

It will certainly be delayed.

Ice-in is typically around October 15. They’ll likely be at least a month behind, Mayor Bill Collins tells The Chronicle.

The Rec Center, behind the YMCA, is home ice for Adirondack Youth Hockey and the Queensbury Spartan and Glens Falls-South Glens Rivermen boys high school teams.

Ice-in hinges on remediating a propylene glycol leak detected last season. Propylene glycol is a refrigerant.

The NYS Department of Environmental Conservation must approve the City’s proposed short term fix and long-term plan, and confirm the leak is sealed.

“We’ve assured DEC that if it doesn’t work, then we’re not opening,” Mayor Collins said. “And if in the middle of the year, it looks like there’s a leak, we’re just going to stop” — close the ice.

DEC stepped in last March after it received an anonymous report of a chemical spill at the Rec Center, the Mayor recalls.

It turned out to be a leak, not a spill — a significant difference, the Mayor says.

Short-term, he said the City is working with a firm recommended by DEC to apply an additive that acts as a liner, to stop any leakages. The Mayor likens it to “Fix a Flat” for tire leaks, “but that’s not really what it is.”

“It can last for a long time, but what we said to DEC is we’d like to use it for this season to get the ice rink back open, and then apply for a grant, and, if we need to, then put the money for replacement of the whole system into next year’s budget.”

If the short term fix doesn’t take, “then we won’t be opening the ice,” the Mayor says. “But we believe it will. There’s no reason to think it won’t.”

Adk. Youth Hockey on other ice

Royce Lawrence, President of the Adirondack Youth Hockey Association, says, “We are currently renting more ice from the Harding Mazzotti Arena than we have in the past. We’re also renting more ice in the general region. Every county except Washington has ice. Right now, we’re practicing down in Saratoga, at Wiebel Avenue and Vernon Arena.”

He said ice rental rates range from $175 to $300 an hour.

“There will be financial impact,” Mr. Lawrence says. “We’ve been doing this for a long time. We have the ability to eat one of these type of years. If we continue to stretch out into, like October, November, we’re definitely going to have conflicts where it’ll cost us more money, but we’ll find ways to keep the kids on the ice.”

“It’s difficult because at the end of the day, we’ve talked about how we definitely have enough kids, we could fill a third facility, or maybe even a fourth.”

Last year AYHA had over 550 players, ages 2 to 19, and 800 members, including coaches and volunteers, he said.

“It’s the fourth biggest youth hockey program in New York State,” Mr. Lawrence says. “Sixty-five percent of our membership stay local (not travel teams). They’re going to be facing earlier mornings” or simply less practice time.

He said trying to schedule future games is “horrible…We had home games against teams that were coming in from Buffalo and stuff like that, that we’re now moving either to Rutland, Vermont, to Schenectady or Saratoga, out of Glens Falls.”

The “Fire on Ice” tournament, November 7-9, is at risk. Mr. Lawrence hopes the Rec Center will have ice in time for the Girls Winter Classic tournament over Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend. He said it draws 45 teams and hundreds of players, coaches and families who stay in hotels and eat in restaurants.

Queensbury Sports Director Rich Keys said high school hockey doesn’t begin until November 17, with the first scrimmages set around Thanksgiving weekend,

Prospective players won’t have free skate time to work out on their own, he said.

The Spartans boys’ hockey team, which also includes Lake George players, is working on contingency plans, Mr. Keys said. They can only do so much until they know for sure what they need, however.

Mr. Keys said they are in communication with the city and with the Rivermen, the Glens Falls-South Glens Falls boys team that also has Hudson Falls and other area players. (The Rivermen did not return a call before press time.)

The Chronicle previously reported, the state champion Adirondack United girls high school hockey team moved from the Rec Center to the Harding Mazzotti Arena after Thunder Junior Hockey exited.

Mayor Collins says, “The DEC came and investigated and found there was no spill, but there had been a leak to the system.” He noted there is a difference in how a spill or a leak is addressed.

DEC was alerted in March and allowed the City to finish the season. “Then they asked us to dig some test wells around the perimeter of the facility, and one or two test wells inside, next to what’s called the chiller pit, where we can get underground and see the refrigerant system.”

“We paid an outside consultant, at the recommendation of the DEC. We tested and found no propylene glycol outside the building, but did find it in our chiller pit, which makes sense, and still saw there was no spill.”

They did not find the source of the leak. “But we did know there had to be a leak somewhere, because we needed to keep topping off the amount in our tanks.”

Mayor Collins says, “We went to the DEC and said we would like to apply for a grant to replace the entire system” — a $1 million request through the NYS Consolidated Funding Application. Awards are announced at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, over the summer, “We’ve cleaned up all the stone in the chiller pit,” where the cooling machinery is located. “We found we needed a retention wall,” around the pit, separate from the leak.

“As long as we were down there…We did some work shoring up the flooring and supports in the flooring” for the rink too.

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