Calif. mine owner wants to build world's tallest statue of Jesus

Ted Arman has big plans for his Iron Mountain Mine and the acidic water that seeps from the federal Superfund site.

They include a return to mineral mining at the location nine miles northwest of Redding, Calif., and a 200-foot Italian marble statue of Jesus Christ atop the 3,500-foot mountain that Arman says would be the largest in the world. Next to the steel-framed Christ would stand a 100-foot crucifix. Arman said the cross also would be lit up at night.

"I hope to make the property a Garden of Eden," Arman said.

But a federal official says that none of Arman's changes are in the works at the mine, home to what scientists have called the world's worst water and whose iron-red scar is visible from much of Redding.

"He has always had a number of plans for the mine," said Rick Sugarek, project manager for the Environmental Protection Agency's cleanup of Iron Mountain.

Sugarek said Arman hasn't made any proposals to the EPA detailing how he would extract minerals -- such as copper, zinc and cadmium -- from the mines' acidic water or for erecting the massive statue.

As long as the statue doesn't interfere with the cleanup effort at the mine, Sugarek said Arman should be free to build it. After all, it is his property.

The white statue would dwarf the famous 130-foot Christ the Redeemer statue that now stands watch over Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

The cost of the project, which would take about three years to complete, would be $40 million to $60 million, and Arman said he's securing funding for it from people around the world.

"With God there is no question of money," he said.

As for the mining, Arman and John Hutchens of Olinda, Calif., who has become his business acquaintance and ghostwriter over the last year, say they have put together the proposal to use "green" mining to pull minerals from water from the old mines.

They have set up a Web site to outline their plans, www.ironmountainmine.com, and Hutchens said he hopes to draw public support for the project.

He said the same runoff the EPA is treating -- separating water that is sent into the Sacramento River from mineral-laden sludge that is buried in an abandoned open mine on the mountain -- could be processed to produce pristine water and profit from extracted minerals.

"Ted's mountain is ideally set up for this," Hutchens said.

Created by a witch's brew of rainfall, air and bacteria, water running through the old mine turns pyrite, or fool's gold, within the mountain into highly acidic runoff, said Rudy Carver of American International Group Environmental Management, a contractor with the EPA that is operating the water treatment plant.

"We essentially end up with clean water getting into the river," Carver said.

Arman said before he bought the mine he made his living as a pilot who ran a flying school and a charter business. He bought the mine in 1976 from Stauffer Chemical Co. -- for an amount he wouldn't disclose -- and operated it until 1986, when the EPA declared it a Superfund site. The Superfund program is aimed at cleaning up uncontrolled hazardous waste sites around the country.

He said the EPA has not only kept him from mining, but also from subsequent plans to produce fertilizer from the runoff.

"They've interfered with everything I've done with my business," Arman said.

(E-mail Dylan Darling at ddarling(at)redding.com)

(Contact Dylan Darling of the Redding Record Searchlight in California at ddarling(at)redding.com)