SILVERTON — Silverton and San Juan County officials seeking a Superfund cleanup at the Gold King and 45 other leaking inactive mines are trusting EPA promises that they’ll get priority.

They say they’ve negotiated for months with the Environmental Protection Agency and feel the EPA role causing the Gold King disaster means local needs will be met. Gov. John Hickenlooper on Monday is expected to send a formal request for Superfund status.

“We believe we were able to get as much as we could from the EPA at this time,” San Juan County Commissioner Scott Fetchenhier said. “We’ll be working closely with the governor and our congressional delegation to ensure this site is a top priority for funding and for using the best science possible to address the situation.”

But the EPA’s track record on Superfund cleanups still feeds congressional suspicion. Congress has cut funding to half the levels of the 1990s, and cleanups such as the one required at Gold King, where no human health hazard has been documented, often drag out for decades.

“The EPA’s gusto for Superfund status and assurances that a Superfund designation will meet all of the community’s needs should be met with skepticism,” said U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, the Republican who represents southwestern Colorado.

And if EPA officials claim they need more funding to complete projects along the Animas River, Tipton said, the agency first should tap its own administrative budget.

“They’re the ones who caused the mess, and they’ve basically misled Congress,” he said. “Obviously, they’re not going to be able to do it overnight, but this shouldn’t become a never-ending story.”

Tipton and U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner pledged to support local interests in a cleanup.

“Whatever mitigation the local communities decide is best to clean up the EPA’s mess, I will fight for them and work to ensure that the EPA lives up to its promises,” Gardner said.

This push for a Superfund cleanup marks a potential shift in the problem of inactive mines. More than 230 are known to be contaminating waterways around Colorado. EPA authorities estimated 40 percent of headwaters of major western rivers are contaminated with acidic heavy metals draining from inactive mines. Most sites don’t qualify for a Superfund cleanup.

Silverton town manager Bill Gardner contends an EPA-funded fix along the Animas could help create a research center for developing solutions applicable elsewhere around the West, and beyond, to reduce acid mine drainage.

But local leaders also have raised concerns about a “stigma” on Silverton after an environmental disaster is declared.

“There are no ironclad guarantees and a number of questions remain, but we are in this for the long haul and will be holding EPA’s feet to the fire,” said Fetchenhier, the commissioner who represented the county in EPA negotiations. “Unlike some other sites, and because of the EPA’s role triggering the spill, this has received international attention. There’s pressure from every corner to make sure this cleanup happens, and we will make sure that pressure doesn’t let up.

“… We want the cleanup done right — that’s more important than speed. This is a decades-long process. If it takes a little longer to do the job right, that’s OK.”

EPA officials acknowledged Superfund is limited. They’ve told locals the agency’s role causing the Aug. 5 Gold King disaster won’t be a factor in setting priorities because disasters are ranked using a numerical system that doesn’t take into account whether the EPA causes harm.

Colorado agencies haven’t found a human health hazard from the scores of inactive mines contaminating Animas headwaters. Last year, when the EPA proposed to test Silverton soil for lead deposited by old smelters, town officials refused. The town draws drinking water from creeks in basins not contaminated by mining.

Silverton officials say residents aren’t hurt by the acid drainage down from the Gold King and other mines into Cement Creek, a murky, metals-laden Animas tributary that flows through town.

Congress may continue to limit Superfund, EPA regional remediation director Bill Murray said. In that case, EPA officials working in San Juan County would tap a regionally controlled discretionary fund to cover initial costs so that a required remediation investigation could proceed “at a fairly rapid pace,” Murray said.

That investigation likely would take at least a year, concurrent with a required feasibility study — all ahead of actual cleanup.

EPA spokeswoman Christie St. Clair said the regional fund receives $8 to $10 million a year for pre-cleanup studies and that “the highest priority is to fund and begin this site’s investigation work.”