By Erica Solvig
The Cincinnati Enquirer

DEERFIELD TWP. - The stadium, practice and game fields at the south end of Kings junior-senior high campus are being closed after soil samples revealed lead levels above acceptable levels.

Soil samples were taken last week around the Columbia Road site, which used to be a sport shooting range near an old ammunition factory. Results from two of the nine samples were above the accepted 400 parts per million, according to results released by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Tuesday.

In response, the school is closing the fields as well as unpaved areas in front of the junior high school. When the Warren County school district's 1,600 senior and junior high students return to class today, they will see orange gates around the closed areas.

"We felt that we would be better to err on the side of safety," said Superintendent Chuck Mason. "Although we don't know, as far out as those fields are over there, that there would be anything there, the chance that it might be polluted with lead was something we didn't want our kids to deal with."

The school's 63-acre campus is one of several sites that the OEPA is looking at because of the presence nearby of the former Peters Cartridge Co. The long-closed factory, which produced ammunition, is on the U.S. EPA's proposed Superfund cleanup list, mainly because of a sport shooting range that was on the property.

The U.S. EPA will start today taking 100 more soil samples. Results will take one to two weeks. During a preliminary walk around the 63-acre campus, EPA officials saw pieces of clay pigeons and lead shots and pellets.

School officials will meet again with EPA and local health officials Sept. 3. The district's athletic director is trying to work out where games and practices will be held until that meeting takes place.

One sample, taken from mulched area near the junior high's entrance, had 581 parts per million of lead. Another, taken from the bleacher area of the George G. King Stadium, had 53,100 parts per million, probably because it had lead shots in the sampling, says Scott Glum, an EPA environmental specialist.

Residents were surprised but calm when they heard the results at Tuesday night's school board meeting.

"No one likes to hear that your children are possibly being exposed to lead," said Sherri Holzman, a school receptionist who has three children in the district. "But I think if this were a serious problem, we would have seen major health issues by now."

Patti Hensley of Deerfield Township, whose two children attend Kings, agreed.

"I'm not overly worried - not at this point," she said. "But I'm anxious to hear the results."

Peters Cartridge and Kings Powder Co. used the part of the site for testing purposes and later for skeet and trap shooting, according to lifelong resident Stephen McDowell, who worked at Peters Cartridge from 1929 until it closed in 1944.

The 89-year-old man also ran the Kings Mills Gun Club, located where Kings Junior High now sits, for several years before it closed in the early 1960s, before the school was built in 1967.

A contractor spent several months trying to extract the lead shot, but did not find it profitable and gave up. That effort, McDowell says, caused a lot of the soil to be overturned and mixed around.

The U.S. EPA found lead on the Peters Cartridge factory site in 1987 during an environmental assessment. The factory, about a mile northeast of Paramount's Kings Island overlooking the Little Miami River, is mostly in shambles, but is home to a few small businesses.

Lead has been linked to a number of chronic health problems and diseases including brain damage, organ failure, hyperactivity, fertility problems, kidney damage and other ailments.

EPA officials said it was too early to tell how much of a risk the lead concentration is until more test results are done.

According to Dr. Kim Dietrich, a University of Cincinnati professor who has studied lead for 23 years, the potential hazards from lead in soil are not as great as lead paint found in older homes throughout Cincinnati.

E-mail esolvig@enquirer.com