FAIRMONT – The Fairmont Housing and Redevelopment Association (HRA) approved purchasing and installing radon mitigation at its meeting on Monday.

The testing found three locations across two buildings where radon gas results exceeded the standard 4.0 acceptable limit. HRA Executive Director Gail Diede said there now needs to be mitigation to bring these levels down.

“What they do is dig a hole,” she said. “In those buildings, we don’t have to put them in those specific units. We just got to draw out of the building. The electrical room that’s in each building, they can drill the hole, put the vent down and bend it out. A fan will be running the entire time.”

Board Member Diana Bradley said she had concerns about whether this would be invasive to any of the apartments, but Diede confirmed it would not have to go into individual apartments.

The estimate for this work came to $4,595, and the test itself cost around $4,580. With this balance, Diede said they had a decision to make.

“If we want that to be part of the POHP (Publicly Owned Housing Program) frame for the mitigation and everything, then that has to be put right now,” she said. “They came up with contracts for the concrete and for the plumbing. If we want the POHP grant to pay for the mitigation, then we have to put that in on one of the bids. We have the funds, rather than hold up on our POHP grant.”

The POHP grant is the $1.9 million grant approved by Minnesota Housing, in a wave that totaled $53 million for public housing repairs across Minnesota. The choice for Fairmont’s HRA is whether to hold up sending out bids for contracts under this grant to include coverage for the mitigation, or make things quicker and pay outright for the mitigation themselves.

“The difference is we still pay the bill [if we use the POHP grant],” Diede said. “We pay it up front, we have to wait for the loan to process to even get our money back. “We have funds to be able to cover whether we pay for the mitigation and testing on our own.”

Board Chair Clare Mosloski made the motion to go in favor of the HRA paying for it themselves. Board Member Deb Goerndt seconded, and the decision was adopted unanimously.

In other news:

— Ron Kopischke has resigned from the HRA board. Kopischke had recently retired after spending 43 years in the banking industry and 36 with Profinium. His resignation was accepted unanimously.

— On the POHP Grant, Diede said she has a meeting with them on Tuesday. She said they were only waiting for the HRA to make a decision on the radon testing, and since the HRA will be paying for that themselves, the grant officials will be putting projects out for bid.