PROVIDENCE -- Attorney General Patrick Lynch is proposing that three paint companies that lost an 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.

Jornal photo / Bill Murphy

Kent Ackley, president of Rhode Island Lead Technicians, of East Providence, takes a lead paint reading with an XRF instrument, during an inspection of a Cranston home.The XRF uses x-rays to detect lead paint through several layers.

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 paints 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 will 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 workforce,” the attorney general said, in a 132-page document filed today at Providence Superior Court.

A six-person jury made history in February 2006 when it found Sherwin Williams, Millenium Holdings 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 Homes Collaborative, formed to manage the funds, 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.

Researchers have shown that inhaling or ingesting even minute quantities of dust or flakes from lead paints 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 for the paint industry in the country despite dozens of lawsuits by individuals, housing authorities and various governments.

Last February, Judge Michael A. 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.