Federal environmental regulators said Wednesday up to $5 million in new funding will accelerate cleanup efforts at a former surface gold mine leaking acidic water in the Lead-Deadwood area.

Environmental Protection Agency officials said the money is part of the $600 million Congress put in the national American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for federal Superfund Site projects.

The Gilt Edge Mine, near Galena along U.S. Highway 385, exposed natural sulfides in the rock as an open-pit gold mine developed during the 1980s. The mine dated to the late 1870s Black Hills gold rush and became one of several in the area that was mined again with "heap-leach" technology that created mountains of crushed rock, which was soaked with diluted cyanide to leach out gold.

However, Brohm Mining Corp.'s Gilt Edge venture failed, and taxpayers in 2000 had to step in to clean the site, which is at the headwaters of Strawberry Creek and Bear Butte Creek, flowing to Sturgis. EPA last year finalized its remediation plan, estimating it will take $50 million over five to seven years to reclaim the nearly 260-acre site.

The process has involved covering the acid-generating rock and neutralizing the acidic water before releasing it from the site. In July 2007, officials estimated there were more than 180 million gallons of stored contaminated water. Acid in water can free naturally occurring arsenic and heavy metal pollutants.

EPA said the additional funds will hasten efforts to stop the threats to area water quality and downstream drinking water sources. The funding also will be used to repair diversion ditches to reduce the volume of non-contaminated water flowing to the site and requiring treatment at the site's water reclamation plant.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and the agency's acting regional administrator, Carol Rushin, in the news release said the additional funding will mean additional jobs. They did not specify how many or how soon.

The spending of federal stimulus funds is reviewed online at www.Recovery.gov.

Details about the Gilt Edge Mine Superfund Site are at www.epa.gov/region8/superfund/sd/giltedge/index.html.

Details about the Superfund program are at

www.epa.gov/superfund.