The author shows that the Potts and Temperley-Lieb representations of the projection generators of a von Neumann algebra are, in general, reducible. The author writes down a new representation with non-vanishing product of odd generators R and gives evidence that it is a common element in these reductions. The operators in this representation may be interpreted as giving the bond transfer matrices of the square lattice Whitney polynomial. The author shows that the reduction of the Temperley-Lieb representation also contains irreducible representations with R=0 which are responsible for eigenvalues in the ice-model spectrum independent of those of the Potts model.