The idea was to help local governments find the most efficient way to clean up lead problems in homes. The program included identifying problem homes, and replacing windows and rehabbing areas where children might be exposed to lead-based paint. The grant was a precursor to coming changes in federal regulations that will require lead abatements for almost all federally funded rehab or construction.

Most scientists agree that removing lead-paint hazards from a child's home can help prevent lead poisoning. However, scientists and policy-makers continue to debate whether the potential health benefits of such abatement are worth the costs. Many children are exposed to lead through flaking paint in homes built before 1978, when lead-based paint was taken off the market.

With this project, the hope was that Cincinnati would learn how to establish interdepartment cooperation and start reducing childrens' risk to lead exposure. Instead, the project stalled from the beginning.

In a recent interview, Health Department officials acknowledged the breakdown.

"It's been very difficult," said Ms. Kochanowski. "I have 27 years with the city, and this has been the most challenging program I've ever been involved in."

Her boss, Health Commissioner Dr. Malcolm Adcock, who expedited the grant application in 1992, cast a positive light on the program's slow pace.

"I think it was an important project to do here," he said. "Yeah, at the level of someone having to actually do it, it has been very, very frustrating. But it's something the community needed to go through anyway in terms of figuring out how to best do this."

Unlike the Department of Neighborhood Services and other city departments, the Health Department does not answer directly to the city manager and city council. The department is run by Dr. Adcock, who answers to the city Health Board, an independent body appointed by the mayor. The department's budget is approved by city council and monitored by the city manager's office.

From the outset, the grant proposal was vaguely construed, according to those involved in the project.

"The grant tried to do everything," said Susan Utt, a Neighborhood Housing analyst who has been assigned to the project off and on for more than a year. "The one thing it didn't have was a foreign policy."

Lead paint, by the numbers Nine percent of children under age 6, and 22 percent of African-American children under 6, have elevated blood-lead levels. 656 Hamilton County children were diagnosed with lead poisoning in 1996, and 8,877 were diagnosed in Ohio. Lead poisoning can result in lower IQs, damaged hearing, stunted growth and behavior problems. 350 lead-laced Cincinnati homes were supposed to be cleaned by February 1997 through a $6 million HUD grant. Nearly $1 million has been spent and no homes have been cleaned. \\More than 60 percent of all housing stock in Cincinnati contains at least some lead paint.

Who's in charge?

"In my opinion, the support had to start at the top, and I don't think they had that," said Sonya Wilson, president and general manager of Rainbow Home Environmental Services, an asbestos- and lead-abatement contractor based in Cincinnati, and a member of the advisory board.

Ms. Wilson, who has handled similar grant contracts in Columbus and Dayton, said the process in Cincinnati has been, by comparison, "a nightmare."

Asked what was done differently in those cities, Ms. Wilson said, "They return your phone calls. They actually make time to sit down and meet with you."

Ms. Gillam at Legal Aid said the advisory committee has held monthly meetings since 1993 to try to jumpstart the project, but little has happened.

"Despite all of the meetings, not a single housing unit has been abated," she said. "No amount of advocacy on our part seems to be moving this along."

Ms. Christenson at Better Housing said Neighborhood Housing has never cared about the project and Health has never been able to handle the responsibility.

"It's a problem of it being a low priority in one department and the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing in another," she said.

Cincinnati's Health Department eventually hired more than 10 people to work solely on this project. Ms. Kochanowski was saddled with the task of trying to figure out homes to be worked on, bid specifications, and other particulars, though she said, "We are not familiar with construction. We are not familiar with construction costs."

Meanwhile Neighborhood Services, the city's experts on rehabbing houses and federal grants, ended up assigning only two people - part time - to the project.

No high-ranking official in city government helped Ms. Kochanowski get sufficient help from DNS, despite repeated pleas for assistance, she said.

"They've not been helping us to the degree that they were expected to help us. . . . I don't think they understand that it was a performance contract and the importance of time in getting things done." Ms. Kochanowski said, adding later, "I'm hedging because I've been told not to criticize."

Ms. Utt admitted her agency had not allocated enough resources to the project, but said the Health Department had done a poor job of communicating with it and leading the project.

"Nothing has gone smoothly," she said. "We're not happy with it either."

The project's problems are recounted in a Health Department request to HUD's Office of Lead-Based Paint Abatement, asking them to extend the grant's deadline. The 150-page-plus document, obtained by The Enquirer, details the many steps that went wrong.

Those include: delays in state approval for certifying abatement contractors; delays with relocating families who live in problem homes; unclear specifications for bids; bids coming in too high; problems with lead testing; problems with checking which homes were eligible for the program; questions to the Internal Revenue Service on how the aid money should be declared; questions about how to handle historic homes; late housing inspections by Neighborhood Services; and other delays.

Still, the request tried to sound a positive note in its opening sentence.

"Although we are very disappointed to have to acknowledge that we have not managed to accomplish any lead abatements yet, we have achieved much of the preparatory work," it begins.

The report goes on to list 51 properties that have been selected by the program for abatement. Dozens of property owners on the list contacted by The Enquirer said they had not had regular communication with the city since they initially heard about the lead program. Dorothy Brown, 39, of Madisonville, said she hasn't heard anything from the city in about six or seven months. Her 3-year-old daughter was found to have lead contamination. She is now being treated, but the Health Department has yet to abate the exterior of the house as it said it would.

"They said we'll do this and that and fix everything," Mrs. Brown said. "I ain't heard nothing."

"The only time we hear anything is when we call them," said David Willie, who owns a home in Over-the-Rhine that was found to be contaminated about a year ago. "I heard a lot of promises." Now the city is making promises to HUD - to abate 350 units in eight months. The extension request to HUD was submitted in May, three months after all the abatement work was supposed to be completed according to the original grant.

Only about 30 contractors in the state of Ohio are licensed for lead abatement, and even if all of them were suddenly to drop whatever they were doing and work on Cincinnati's project, it would be unlikely to be finished by February, according to contractors. In addition, the project hasn't even found 350 units to fix yet.

In addition, contract bids for homes slated for repair have been coming in much higher than expected - raising questions about whether there's enough money to do the work, and whether the city may have to pay from its own coffers to complete the project.

Ms. Kochanowski said the goal of finishing 350 units in eight months might not be realistic, but the city hoped to revise it later.

"With the quarterly report that gets submitted in October we may have to say to HUD, 'It doesn't look like were going to make it,' " she said. "I'm just saying we're on the brink and it's too early to make a more accurate projection. And you obviously don't go in requesting a year's extension saying that you don't think you've got a prayer."

Dr. Adcock stressed the project was a research grant, so not meeting the specified numbers of fixed housing units didn't matter that much.

"This is not an abatement program. This is not a program to abate houses. This is a program to determine the best way to do abatement," he said.

"Just because someone in another city is ahead of us at this point in time in doing abatements, the question that remains to be answered is whether or not whatever they are doing is going to contribute the same as our program does to the overall knowledge base," he said.

Mr. Jacobs at HUD in Washington, D.C. disagreed.

"I believe in making sure that we have concrete results," he said. "That means abated houses. You learn by doing."

Asked whether Cincinnati would have to return all the grant money, including the money it has spent so far, if it did not meet the 350 unit goal, Mr. Jacobs said that he would have to talk to his legal department.

If the program is pulled, property owners who were unfortunate enough to get onto the program list will be out of luck.

James Simpson, 82, was notified that a child living in one of his rental apartments on Harvey Avenue in Avondale had lead poisoning. The Health Department then told him he should not rent the apartment again until the abatement project fixed the apartment. That was more than a year ago. Mr. Simpson, who just had prostate surgery and has to pay for a nursing home for his wife, desperately needs some resolution.

"I've been waiting for almost a year without anything happening," he said. "I've been held up without any rent, any money and I'm under hardship."

Even if the program does get going, it may never get to small property owners like Mr. Simpson. To speed up work, Ms. Kochanowski said, the program's goal is to do work at large complexes rather than single-family homes.

The result: Work is delayed at homes with children with known lead-poisoning problems in favor of work in vacant apartments where children may or may not ever live.

Despite the problems with this lead-paint abatement grant, Neighborhood Services plans to apply this August for a second abatement grant, for up to $3 million.

"It is the last thing I want, but that doesn't mean we won't do it," Ms. Utt said. "If we do it, our numbers goals will not be so ambitious."

Since December 1993, Dr. Adcock said, the city has learned a lot about the complexities of lead-paint abatement.

Among the lessons: Health officials have no intention of being the chief agency for any further lead abatement grants.