Arman dreams of developing the Superfund site that is the Iron Mountain
Mine

By Dylan Darling
Friday, January 2, 2009

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Iron Mountain Mine

Ted Arman stands near the top of Iron Mountain west of Redding.
Arman plans to build a 200-foot Italian marble statue of Jesus Christ atop the
3,500-foot peak that is on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund, or
major environmental cleanup, site. View
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IRON MOUNTAIN MINE - Driving his signature 1989 Lincoln along the gravel road
that winds through his 2,800-acre property overlooking Redding, Ted Arman has to
regularly radio in his location.

"This is kind of ridiculous to treat an owner this way," said Arman, an 86
year-old self-made millionaire who lives in Shasta Lake.

On the other end of the two-way radio are contractors working for the federal
government to clean up the old Iron Mountain Mine and prevent its toxic water -
considered to be the world's worst - from getting into the Sacramento River.

They tell him the radio check-ins are for his safety, so they can warn those
driving large trucks that he's on the roadway, Arman said. But he sees it as
another way that the government, the Environmental Protection Agency in
particular, is suppressing what he wants to do.

"They've restricted my business for 28 years," Arman said.

Arman has fantastic plans for Iron Mountain Mine. They include extracting
valuable metals from the water seeping from the mine to erecting the largest
statue of Jesus Christ on the globe atop its namesake peak.

But before anything happens in the mine shafts or on the mountain top,
decades worth of dispute in the courtroom will likely need to be settled.

In the latest legal rounds, Arman contends that the EPA is guilty of fraud,
malice and deceit and he said he's asking for $7.9 billion in damages from the
government. Countering his action, the EPA continues to pursue about $60 million
it says Arman owes the government for the mine's cleanup since it started in the
1980s, said Rick Sugarek, project manager for the EPA.

"We are really looking for costs that are associated with doing studies and
performing construction work," he said.

In 1983 the federal government declared the mine a Superfund site, which the
EPA defines as an uncontrolled or abandoned place where hazardous waste is
located. Since then a dam has been built on Spring Creek, which flows from the
mine site, as well as a water treatment plant. Acidic water seeping out of the
mine - which yielded iron, silver, gold, copper, zinc and pyrite from the 1860s
until 1963 - carries heavy metals that the EPA says could be a danger to fish
and people alike.

Having settled with the company that sold Arman the site in 2000 - which had
by then changed its name to Aventis CropScience - the EPA still seeks
compensation from Arman, Sugarek said. The litigation started in 1990.

Monday, Arman filed claims in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San
Francisco, alleging the EPA is preventing him from using his mine, its remedy
has done nothing but increase the environmental hazard and that the agency is
trespassing on his land.

"They've gotten away with these crimes against the environment and us for too
long," said John Hutchens, who has served as Arman's spokesman and Web site
designer for a year.

While the legal battle continues, Arman peppers his Web site regularly with
his latest plans for Iron Mountain Mine. The Web site, http://www.ironmountainmine.com/,
touts the mine site as a location for safe, affordable
earthquake-and-fire-resistent housing or perhaps a good place to build a giant
solar panel factory.

But Arman, who said he found religion in recent years, said the plan dearest
to his heart is converting the rugged land into a green parklike sanctuary.

"My whole plan is to make this a garden of Eden," Arman said.

Central to that plan is a 200-foot statue of Jesus Christ that would trump a
similar work of art in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as the tallest on the planet.

"Where the statue is going, you'd be able to see it 100 miles away," Arman
said.

The statue wouldn't be the only one with a biblical connection to stand
sentry over a Superfund site. Atop the Continental Divide - at 8,510 feet above
sea level - a 90-foot Mary, mother of Jesus, looks over the Berkeley Pit in
Butte, Mont. An old copper mine, the deep pit is now filled with toxic water.
The statue itself is not on the land that is part of the cleanup.

A nondenominational landmark in honor of women worldwide, Our Lady of the
Rockies draws thousands of visitors each year, said a volunteer at the nonprofit
group that maintains the statue.

Arman also envisions his statue drawing visitors to his land.

Along with the statue Arman said he wants to build vista points along the
road up to the mountain top, where people could rest and enjoy the view of
Redding and nearby mountains. Visitors could be shuttled to the statue, 10 to 15
at a time, in battery driven golf carts.

The 232-foot statue would cost about $60 million and Arman said he's already
getting financial promises from people around the world to build it.

Having made a fortune as a flight instructor and shrewd investor, Arman said
he believes anything is possible.

He also holds a love for mountains and mining that started after he moved
West from White Plains, N.Y., in the 1960s. There he'd been married for seven
years, but he divorced and moved west to start a new life, he said.

He now lives with his girlfriend of 43 years and six cats.

Arman said he'd originally been interested in just a pile of mineral-laden
tailings on the Iron Mountain Mine site and not in the mine itself, but bought
it all in 1976 when the owner wouldn't sell only the tailings.

Sugarek has said that Arman is free to do what he wants on his property, as
long as it doesn't interfere with the EPA's cleanup.

"We spent a lot of money getting this remedy in place and it's been very
effective, and we don't want to see it undone," Sugarek said.

When it comes to Iron Mountain Mine, he said the EPA is focused on trying to
get the compensation it feels Arman owes. Sugarek said that the EPA tried to
work with Arman outside the courtroom, but those efforts were unsuccessful.

Arman said it's the EPA that's been uncooperative.

"If the EPA gets out of our way we could get 2,000 people employed," he
said.

Sugarek said that neither Arman nor the firms with which he's associated have
submitted firm plans for the site's future to the EPA.

"To date he has never been able to do more than propose ideas," Sugarek
said.

Reporter Dylan Darling can be reached at 225-8266 or [email-masked].

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