PROVIDENCE — Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch is proposing that three paint companies that lost a historic public nuisance trial last year now spend $2.4 billion removing lead paint from more than half the houses and apartments in Rhode Island.

A lead paint reading is taken with a device that uses X-rays to detect lead paint through several layers.

The Providence Journal / Bill Murphy

The so-called abatement plan, if approved by the courts, would lead to the single biggest construction job in state history and create a precedent that is being closely watched around the country.

Lynch’s office wants the three paint companies to clean up lead paint in 240,000 houses and apartments, 12,969 seasonal housing units, 419 child-care centers and 339 elementary schools over a four-year period.

He is proposing that some 10,000 workers would be needed to complete the work quickly. The massive job of replacing windows and doors and covering walls would require a “substantial training and outreach effort ... to attract the needed work force,” the attorney general said, in a 132-page document filed yesterday in Superior Court.

The three defendants appealed to Superior Court Judge Michael A. Silverstein yesterday morning in his chambers to seal the abatement plan.

Scott Smith, a lawyer representing one of the defendants, Millenium Holdings, said that when the paint companies saw the state plan they found it so “ridiculous” that they wanted it held so the companies could prepare their own plan. Then both reports could be released simultaneously, he said. Silverstein turned them down.

Smith said the companies view the state plan as “completely unprecedented, unworkable and, indeed, harmful to the state.”

If the plan was adopted, he said, it would benefit the very landlords who have done the least to maintain their properties and protect children.

What’s more, the state abatement plan would employ twice as many workers as Boston’s Big Dig and cost 4.5 times the state’s largest public works project, the combined sewer overflow system in Providence — all while the rate of poisonings plummets.

Lynch responded that his plan “represents a tremendous step forward for public health now and well into the future. It envisions a clear beginning and end. I am proud that my office has worked so hard to bring this case to the point where, finally, Rhode Island has a permanent solution to our lead-poisoning problem.”

A six-person jury made history in February 2006 when it found Sherwin-Williams, Millenium and NL Industries created a public nuisance generations ago when they made and sold the lead paints that continue to poison children in Rhode Island. The jury did not find against a fourth company, ARCO.

A fifth, DuPont, settled with the state for about $12 million. (Just last week the Healthy Kids Collaborative, formed to manage the money, sought proposals to spend up to $2 million on public outreach and education programs in Rhode Island.)

The jury ordered the defendants to abate, or clean up, the lead paints. At the time, the state estimated the cost would range from $1.37 billion to $3.7 billion.

Research has shown that inhaling or ingesting even minute quantities of dust or flakes from lead paint can damage the neurological systems of developing children. Since 1991, more than 36,000 Rhode Island children have been found with elevated lead levels.

The verdict was the first loss in the country for the paint industry despite dozens of lawsuits by individuals, housing authorities and various governments.

Last February, Silverstein, who presided over the trial and some six years of litigation that preceded it, rejected every plea and motion the companies filed to retry or throw out the case.

Now the defendants are pinning their hopes on an appeal to the Rhode Island Supreme Court. But that hasn’t moved forward because all sides are awaiting completion of an official transcript of the trial.

In the meantime, Silverstein rejected the companies’ petition to stop planning for the abatement work until after the appeal is heard. Instead, he set a timetable for the two sides to present abatement plans, which he said he wouldn’t put into effect until the appeal is completed.

Following Silverstein’s schedule, the companies will have until Nov. 15 to respond to the state’s plan, and then the state will have until Dec. 15 to rebut the companies’ arguments.

In the meantime, Silverstein is reviewing proposals from each side for candidates for a special master to oversee the abatement work, according to courts spokesman Craig N. Berke.

The report from Lynch’s office is the first detailed plan for the abatement work. It was written by Lynch’s staff, outside counsel and consultants and reviewed by numerous state agencies. It is admittedly aggressive and upbeat.

“The proposed actionable lead abatement program is clearly an ambitious one,” concludes the report. “When completed, it will mark the first time that any state has made the bulk of its housing and buildings free of actionable lead on a reasonably permanent basis and implemented primary prevention to prevent children from being harmed, instead of only acting after harm has occurred.”

The report does not propose making housing “lead-free,” which is the standard followed in Massachusetts. It recommends making housing “lead-safe” for the expected life of each building.

It recommends creating a priority group of housing or day-care centers already used by children with elevated lead levels, or in high-risk areas or with histories of non-compliance with state lead laws. Initially, the work would be focused in the six communities with the highest rates of poisonings: Central Falls, Newport, Pawtucket, Providence, West Warwick and Woonsocket.

The report acknowledges that lead poisoning has dropped sharply in Rhode Island in recent years. In 1992, 29.6 percent of Rhode Island children were poisoned before they reached age 6. Last year, the number dropped to below 2 percent — or 790 children poisoned or re-poisoned.

“While large, this proposal is not without precedent,” the report notes. “It has already occurred in the nation’s public housing program, which covers approximately one million housing units across the country.”

It recommends that the paint companies carry out the abatement by hiring 60 to 75 people to supervise thousands of private contractors.

As of last month, there were a total of 833 workers licensed in Rhode Island to do lead removal work. But the report said there are 6,000 to 8,000 registered construction contractors in Rhode Island who could be trained to do the lead work.

It also noted there are 160 registered lead-abatement firms in Massachusetts and 105 in Connecticut. Also, the report noted, the total construction work force in the three states is nearly 233,000 workers.

“In short, obtaining a quality workforce of 10,000 abatement workers for the Rhode Island actionable lead abatement program is about 5 percent of the construction workforce in Rhode Island and two nearby states,” the report concluded. “This is an achievable goal.”

The report says that throughout the nation in the 1990s the number of houses with lead paint declined from 64 million to 38 million, due to lead abatement, demolition or rehabilitation.

The report recommends excluding bridges and other steel structures, post-1978 buildings, institutional living quarters not occupied by children, housing for the elderly and buildings slated for demolition within the next two years.

The report does acknowledge that cost estimates for cleaning up houses vary widely. It said one estimate in 2002 put the average cost at $11,500 per dwelling unit. A more recent estimate put the figure at $15,500.

But most of the estimates, the report notes, are for cleaning up the highest risk housing, which is not representative of Rhode Island housing. But there also should be economies of scale to working on so many houses at once, the report noted. So it settled on an estimate of $11,250 per housing unit.

In its final tally, the report estimate that abatement would cost $2.3 billion, oversight staff would cost $22 million and inspections should cost $100 million.

The report concluded that cleaning up all of the affected housing will require 8 million days of labor. That led to the determination that 10,000 workers could get the job done in three to four years.

The plan includes recommendations on how to relocate tenants while their apartments are being abated.

plord@projo.com