The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it’s about halfway through with its operations to put out a landfill fire in Alabama that’s been burning since November.

EPA on-scene coordinator Terry Stilman said that as of Thursday the agency has graded and covered about 50% of the landfill area since the agency assumed control of the site on Jan. 18.

Depending on the weather, Stilman says the agency could finish its work at the site in about three weeks.

“We feel, depending on the weather, we will be essentially done in about three weeks,” Stilman said. “And I say depending on the weather because when it is too wet, we’re not able to effectively work on site.

“So there might be days where we’re not able to do much earthmoving.”

Contractors working for EPA have been leveling the burning area with bulldozers and using dump trucks to cover the smoldering ground with fresh fill dirt. Working within the fire site does cause smoke to escape from the underground blaze, but EPA is using water trucks to minimize that.

So far, the agency has used more than 546 truckloads (more than 6,500 cubic yards) of fill dirt to smother the fire.

The fire was first reported at the Environmental Landfill, Inc. on Nov. 25, Black Friday.

The landfill — located about 15 miles northeast of Birmingham between the suburbs of Moody and Trussville — is described as a green waste landfill that specialized in disposal of downed trees and other natural waste, but also accepting concrete and asphalt, according to signs on the property. In addition, neighbors and inspectors for the Alabama Department of Environmental Management have reported numerous instances of unauthorized waste being found on the site.

The part of the landfill that has been burning for more than two months is described as being a pile of dead trees inconsistently covered in dirt, stacked up to 100 feet deep in places over the 25-acre property.

The EPA agreed to take over the operations to put out the fire after air samples showed elevated levels of concerning chemicals, such as benzene and trichloroethylene.

Stilman said the amount of smoke being released from the site has decreased greatly since the agency took over, and daily air monitoring reports from the site show fewer spikes in dangerous levels of particulate matter or chemical benzene in the air. But there are still concerns, Stilman said, particularly about benzene, one of the chemicals detected in the fire above the agency’s removal management level.

“That’s the threshold that we use to determine whether action is needed,” Stilman said. “So every day we’re comparing the levels that we find to that [removal management] level. And we have those for all sorts of contaminants. In this case, we’re focused on benzene because that’s the contamination of concern.”

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EPA responds to Alabama landfill fire