HAILEY, Idaho The Idaho Division of Environmental Quality will be setting up a field office in Hailey or Ketchum to oversee what it hopes will be state management of cleanup work at the Triumph mine site.

The state has asked the federal Environmental Protection Agenc

y to defer listing the tiny Blaine County community as a Superfund location, and instead let the Division of Environmental Quality handle the job.

''It's important that we have someone right there immediately available to the citizens,'' said Bob Lupton, the state agency's Twin Falls-based regional administrator. ''Not in Twin Falls, not in Boise, and not, even worse, on the West Coast.''

Triumph, about 10 miles northeast of Hailey, is the site of almost 1 million cubic yards of silver mine tailings containing lead and arsenic. But local residents fear a Superfund listing will mean years of expensive, disruptive federal intervention.

Before the EPA agrees to defer the listing an almost unprecedented move it must work out an agreement with the state and other ''potentially responsible parties'' for remediation of environmental damage at the site.