INEZ, Ky. — The federal agency that monitors coal-mine ponds has found no imminent danger of another collapse like the one that mired this eastern Kentucky community in 250 million gallons of black sludge.

        The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration sent inspectors to mine ponds across Appalachia after a 70-acre impoundment broke on a mountaintop outside Inez on Oct. 11.

        “We've found nothing earth-shattering,” said Rodney Brown, spokesman for the agency. “If we saw something that appeared to endanger residents, of course, we would make that public.”

        Residents of this Martin County community were caught by surprise when torrents of black goo spilled into Coldwater and Wolf creeks, covering roads, killing fish and fouling drinking water along 60 miles of the Kentucky-West Virginia border.

        The pond, owned by Martin County Coal Corp., had been labeled by the federal mining agency as a moderate risk to collapse. At least 45 dams in eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia and Virginia had been considered by the agency as having a higher potential to collapse.

        Shortly after the Inez disaster, federal inspectors were sent to evaluate 225 similar dams in the coalfields of Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. Those evaluations will take about three months to complete, but Mr. Brown said no obvious problems to suggest another collapse is in the offing have been found by inspectors who visited all similar impoundments.

        Bill Marcum, a spokesman for the company, said more than 500 workers, using bulldozers, dredges, loaders and dump trucks, have been working around the clock to clean up the spill, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency called one of the worst environmental disasters ever in the Southeast.

        Mr. Marcum said a “significant amount” of the sludge that covered lawns and gardens in the hardest-hit areas has been removed to temporary holding ponds, and workers have begun sowing seeds along stream banks that had been covered with the goo.

        “It's looking better, but given what it was, anything would look better,” said Wayne Davis, environmental section chief for the Kentucky Division of Fish and Wildlife Resources. “They've still got a long way to go.”

        The Kentucky Natural Resources and Environmental Pro tection Cabinet has estimated the cost of the cleanup to reach about $16.5 million.

        “They're making progress,” said Mark York, a spokesman for the state agency. “Obviously, we all want it cleaned up as quickly as possible. ... The company is doing everything it can to get the job done.”

        As of this week, Mr. York said, the company has removed almost 47 million gallons of liquid material and more than 232,000 cubic yards of the semisolid sludge.

        Mr. Davis said biologists and conservation officers haven't yet estimated the number of fish killed by the spill. He said the effect on wildlife isn't as dire as first expected.

        Although nearly all fish were wiped out in Wolf Creek and along a stretch of the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River, some have survived in the lower stretches of Coldwater, Blacklog and Rockcastle creeks, and the main channel of the Big Sandy River.

        Mr. Davis said the surviving fish are showing signs of distress from the weeks of breathing coal-contaminated water.

        Measures taken by the coal company to stop more sludge water from entering those streams has saved many of the fish, Mr. Davis said. The company built a series of small dams along the hardest-hit streams to stop the lavalike flow of the sludge.

        “We've been fortunate that we've not had a lot of precipitation since the spill,” Mr. York said. “That allowed work to continue uninterrupted and kept down any prospect of flooding or problems with the sludge being washed on downstream.”

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