INEZ - The ground is settling beneath a new federal prison being built on a strip-mined Martin County hilltop, causing a guard tower to tilt and portions of another building to sink slightly.

        The federal government has already spent $40 million to stabilize the ground and prepare it for building. Officials say they don't know why the problems are occurring or how much it will cost to fix them.

        The Big Sandy penitentiary, with a price tag that had already hit $170 million, could end up being the most expensive federal prison ever built, officials say.

        Officials say they're not sure whether the problem, which was discovered a few weeks ago, will delay the project. Tower 2, a 100-foot-tall guard tower, is now tilting a few inches off center. Settling has also been discovered beneath the new administration building.

        “We're going to evaluate the problem, we're going to determine what the problem is and we're going to do whatever is necessary to fix the problem,” said David Dorworth, chief of the site selection branch of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

        The prison, which was originally supposed to open Aug. 29, is now scheduled to be completed in January. The delays have been caused by other construction issues not related to the soil settling problems, Mr. Dorworth said. Construction started in June 1998.

        Officials with P.J. Dick and Trumbull, the project's general contractor, declined to comment, referring all questions to the Bureau of Prisons.

        Problems are bound to turn up when you're working on a project this big, Mr. Dorworth said. “We trust the competency and the ingenuity of our contractors and architects working on the project to correct the problem,” he said.

        The 316-acre prison site, about eight miles south of Inez on Ky. 3, sits on an old mountaintop mine site. Pocahontas Land Co. donated the land, but federal officials spent an estimated $40 million to prepare the site.

        Construction workers dug a 16-acre hole 60 feet deep to help prepare the ground. After moving 1 million cubic yards of dirt and rock, they dug hundreds of 180-foot-deep holes and removed another 2.5 million cubic yards of dirt to stabilize the area.

        The prison complex, which will hold 960 high-security federal inmates in one area and 126 minimum-security inmates in another area, is expected to create about 400 jobs.

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