Skaters at city ice rink should wear extra layer
People using popular outdoor rink this season won’t be able to warm themselves around gas firepit
Skating at Kelowna’s Stuart Park will be chillier than usual when the popular ice rink opens Nov. 30. The outdoor gas firepit will not be turned on as the city tries to reduce its overall natural gas use because of last month’s rupture of a pipeline in northern B.C.
“Our intention right now is not to turn the firepit on at all,” Martin Johansen, the city’s building services manager, said Thursday.
Asked if he expected the city would get some complaints from skaters about not being able to warm up on cold winter days, Johansen said: “Possibly, but I think most people realize there’s a need to conserve natural gas right now. People going to the rink should just dress a little warmer.”
City crews are now building the edges of the ice rink across from Water Street and expect to start flooding the surface by Nov. 23.
“We should be building ice by the end of next week,” said Justin Pont, the city’s facilities co-ordinator. “Our projected opening date right now is Nov. 30, one day earlier than last year.”
An Enbridge pipeline near Prince George ruptured Oct. 9, prompting FortisBC to appeal for residential and business customers provincewide to reduce their energy use. Although the pipeline was repaired Nov. 2, the flow of natural gas was restarted at only 55 per cent of capacity and will ramp up to 80 per cent by the end of November.
“While bringing Enbridge’s full transmission to 80 per cent will be a positive step, it is not enough natural gas to support the typical winter natural gas consumption of our entire customer base,” FortisBC said in statement last week.
Since FortisBC asked customers to use less natural gas, consumption has declined about 15 per cent from what might otherwise have been expected given recent temperatures, spokesman Sean Bradshaw says.
The City of Kelowna has done its part to trim natural gas use by reducing the temperature in all municipally owned buildings by one degree Celsius and lowering the water temperature in city pools, also by one degree. The operating hours of some city facilities have also been shortened to reduce heating costs. There have been few complaints, Johansen said.
It isn’t known how much less natural gas has been used, or what the financial savings have been for the city, he said.
“It’s very difficult to come up with that number because every building’s occupancy needs are different,” Johansen said. “But if FortisBC asks us to do more, we’ll do more.”