You can’t make this shit up:

Calif. mine owner wants to build world’s tallest statue of Jesus | ScrippsNews

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.

Not sure how that’ll turn a Supderfund site into a garden of Eden, but then I tend to live in reality and not La La Land. Estimates are that it’ll take three years to complete the statue at a cost of between $40 and $60 million, which Arman hopes to secure funding for from unnamed people around the world who apparently want nothing more than to have a really big statue of Jesus sitting on top of a toxic mining operation. Perhaps it’s an allegory to how Jesus used to hang out with the lepers and such.