Published: January 17, 2007 12:05 pm            

Keep the stink out of the rink

WISCONSIN RAPIDS, Wis. — The city will soon find out if its campaign to keep the stink out of a rink is working.

The Witter Field ice rink has a 2-year-old, $196,000 warming house — as well as a not-so-savory reputation for its late-season odor.

Bill Mohr says visits to the rink often end back home at the washing machine to clean his daughters’ winter clothes of the stink after they fall on the ice.

“You ask just about anybody who goes out there and they will tell you. ... It’s almost like a sewer,” Mohr said.

Dan Morzewski, relief supervisor with the city’s Park and Recreation Department, said the problem isn’t believed to be the ice but the dead grass beneath it.

In late January and February, sunshine heats the ground and causes an ooze of mud and grass that bubbles to the surface at soft spots in the ice, he said.

“We end up with what we call boils — areas where it boils up kind of like a volcano,” Morzewski said. “It smells in my opinion like manure.”

Because of the mild winter this year, the city has only opened the rink two days, but a cold snap this week allowed for reflooding the rink to reopen it for the rest of the season, he said.

If the weather cooperates, skaters should learn in coming weeks whether the city solved the problem this year by scraping away the grass before flooding the rink.

Even if it works, there will be more questions for the city, Morzewski said — like whether it will be cost-effective to go through the scraping operation and then have to replant grass each spring.

        

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