A more than $1.4 million effort to permanently bury decades worth of trash at the Powell landfill is now underway.

Contractor GK Construction is a couple of weeks into an estimated three-month-long project to cover and reclaim some 20 acres of garbage pits that are no longer being used.

“You’re never even going to know a landfill was there (in that part of the facility). That’s the goal anyway,” said Park County Landfills Office Manager Sandie Morris.

Though there’s more activity at the Powell landfill during the project, it’s business as usual for customers.

“Everything at the landfill’s still open and we’re still accepting everything the way we normally are,” Morris said.

In reclaiming the old garbage pits, GK Construction must meet Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality standards intended to ensure that the trash won’t become an environmental hazard in the future; that includes a $100,000 leak detection system.

GK Construction, of Lovell, won the job by submitting a low bid of $1.44 million.

That beat out Oftedal Construction of Casper by not even $1,000 — or less than .07 percent — among a total of four bidders.

Park County Engineer Brian Edwards said GK Construction was “highly qualified.” The bid came in roughly $270,000 better than expected.

There was an initial mix-up as to whether GK Construction qualified as a Wyoming company, because its certificate of residency had lapsed, Edwards said. However, the business — which has been operating in Lovell since 1978 — cleared up the problem.

GK Construction started work shortly after Labor Day and “they’re right on schedule,” Morris said last week. “They’re just doing an excellent job.”

The initial work has involved shaping and leveling the old piles of trash and “the transformation has just been out of this world,” Morris said.

The pits being formally closed are filled with “wet” household trash (officially known as municipal solid waste).

Park County had to stop burying household trash at the Powell landfill in 2012, after county commissioners found that building new pits to modern DEQ standards would be too expensive. Household quantities of municipal solid waste are still accepted at the Powell site, but it has to be put in a bin and then trucked to Cody.

Other types of trash — like construction and demolition materials and dead animals — continue to be accepted at the Powell landfill much as they have for decades.