HOOKSTOWN - Due to the recent coal waste spill in Tennessee, the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is ordering the re-inspection of FirstEnergy's Little Blue Run coal ash reservoir and 10 other slurry basins in Pennsylvania.

DEP acting Secretary John Hanger said his organization is dedicated in preventing a similar disaster to the one at the Tennessee Kingston Steam Plant where a retaining wall failed and dumped over a billion gallons of sludge.

"We are committed to doing everything in our power to avoid a similar catastrophe and to protect the health and safety of Pennsylvanians living near these structures," Hanger said in an official statement.

The Little Blue Run reservoir that straddles the West Virginia and Pennsylvania border is located just several miles east of downtown East Liverpool and Chester.

Teresa Candori, DEP spokesperson, stressed that even though Little Blue Run is one of the slurry basins that will be re-investigated this month, there are no current problems at the site.

The re-inspection of the largest ash disposal dam site will be in addition to the scheduled yearly inspection that will happen later in 2009.

During these inspections, officials will take soil samples around the site to see if any chemical leaks can be detected, Candori said. The DEP spokesperson also added a visual inspection of the dam itself is also included.

FirstEnergy Spokesman Mark Durbin welcomed the added inspection and said the DEP visit would not be an inconvenience at all.

"We inspect it ourselves twice a year and then submit a report to the DEP, which we did in December 2008," Durbin said. "We actually have people up there every day to make sure all the operations are going smoothly."

The bi-yearly report that was recently submitted in December is performed by a third-party service that has been with FirstEnegry's Little Blue Run site since its inception in 1975 and Durbin said this has allowed that inspector team to become very familiar with the dam and surrounding areas.

This submission happened just months after the yearly DEP report of the site.

"Little Blue Run was inspected in August," Candori said. "We're just doing this [re-inspection] just to reassure people that we're doing everything we can to keep an eye on these things."

The difference in the composition of the dam and waste are reasons why a repeat to a similar disaster in Tennessee is unlikely.

According to Durbin, the material in Little Blue Run is "scrubber slurry," which is a mixture of a lime compound and fly ash. That slurry is pipelined from the Bruce Mansfield power plant in Shippingport to the Little Blue Run site. As it is deposited, it transforms into a "low-grade concrete" as it hardens, Durbin added.

The FirstEnergy spokesman said this differs greatly than the Tennessee site that has "wet fly-ash" that was supported by a dam that was constructed of clay soil and some of the fly-ash material.

The Little Blue Run Dam is about 9 million cubic-yards, about 400 feet high, 1,300 feet thick at the base and about 2,200 feet across the top, Durbin said. All this is monitored by high-end equipment that detects any movement in the structure.

"Ours is a strong, sound dam and was designed that way from the beginning," Durbin stressed. "When we proposed this years ago, safety was first and foremost and we have not deviated from that at all."

The goal of safety is what is driving FirstEnergy to work in cooperation with the DEP's order for re-inspection.

"We have a great relationship with them and whatever they need us to do we're obviously more than willing to do it," Durbin said.