Over the next few weeks the Tennessee Valley Authority will be installing new monitoring devices at the ash pond at its plant in Gallatin.

The project comes after an ash pond’s dike burst at a TVA plant in Kingston in 2008, spilling millions of cubic yards of ash into a nearby river.

Ash sludge is what’s left over after coal is burned for energy.

TVA officials say they don’t worry about the ash spilling in Gallatin the way it did at the plant near Knoxville a year and a half ago. For one thing, the earthen dikes around the pond where ash is stored at Gallatin are only a third as tall as the one that broke.

And they’ve stepped up inspections. Bill Hunt is Gallatin’s environmental program administrator. He says 13 new sensors, called piezometers, will help detect potential seepage.

“And you’re looking for changes. And the project you see now on these piezometers – we’re installing instrumentation where they can be monitored remotely.”

Officials say if they discover the dikes are eroding they can respond accordingly, possibly with bulldozers.

Over the next few years TVA is planning to convert all 11 of its plants to store dry ash instead of wet, at a total cost between $1.5 to $2 billion.