By Sheila McLaughlin
Enquirer staff writer

INDIAN HILL - The city should know by August whether preliminary tests that showed elevated levels of mercury in lakes at a former gravel pit are a cause for concern.

The city, which plans to develop the gravel pit into a park that will include boating and catch-and-release fishing, has hired an independent agency to determine the accuracy of initial tests from the site in April.

Those samples indicated that mercury levels in some of the lakes were higher than standards for drinking water, and in two cases, unsafe for aquatic life.

The gravel pits sit on top of an aquifer that feeds the city's wells, but city officials said the lakes are about one mile from the location where Indian Hill draws its well water.

"Given that these lakes are not a source of drinking water and that mercury is present throughout the environment, these preliminary results are not a cause for concern at this time," City Manager Mike Burns said Thursday in a prepared statement released through a public-relations firm.

"Once that information is received in six to eight weeks ... Indian Hill will decide what measures, if any, may be necessary to address the actual situation."

Burns' statement was released by Ria Davidson Communications, which served last year as a public relations agent for Ryland Homes involving concerns and publicity about Lexington Manor, a lead-contaminated subdivision in Butler County.

Burns was responding to a story this week in the Enquirer that said the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency had advised Indian Hill to step up mercury testing in its wells as a result of the mercury findings, and was investigating information that a target range also operated at the gravel pits until sometime in the 1970s.

Burns said surface-water testing and earlier groundwater testing at 309-acre gravel pit site did not detect lead concentrations higher than what naturally occurs in the environment.

Mercury and lead also were not detected in unusual levels in prior tests on Indian Hill's drinking water, he said.

E-mail smclaughlin@enquirer.com