New Idria Historical Preservation Project President Ray Iddings
has submitted an application to buy the 880-acre deserted property
to preserve environmental and historical resources there.
New Idria Historical Preservation Project President Ray Iddings has submitted an application to buy the 880-acre deserted property to preserve environmental and historical resources there.
Iddings sent the application to San Benito County Tax Collector Mary Lou Andrade last month and is still waiting for an answer. Andrade said she recently has read the application but she still is checking it to make sure it’s done properly.
Andrade said the property was supposed to be put up for sale at a public auction in March but it was taken off because of technicalities. It could have been sold by now if she hadn’t pulled it off the public auction, she said.
Iddings said he wants to purchase the property so he and a team of others can clean it up. He states in the proposal that over the past five years, many important players, including Myers Industries, have prepared to undertake the environmental remediation of the site.
New Idria is 880 acres, which included a historic 24-foot reservoir and two miles of San Carlos Creek, according to the proposal. It is a historic quicksilver mine that operated for more than a century until the early 1970s.
Threatened species such as the pond turtle, foothill yellow-legged frog and the two-striped garter snake call part of San Carlos Creek home, according to the proposal. Part of the Idria town is polluted with acid mine drainage, and cleanup of the site would reduce the impact that the pollution has on the habitat of animals there, according to the proposal.
The acceptance of the proposal would put the property on track toward becoming a historical and ecological preserve, as stated in the acquisition proposal. If denied, Iddings contends, it would guarantee continued degradation of important historic resources and critical environmental habitat.
“We have conducted extensive environmental and historical research on the property that fully (qualifies) us to manage this critical environment,” according to the proposal.
Iddings said he would want to put the town into a open space trust for public use, which would save a lot of problems.
“Idria is important (and) needs to be preserved,” Iddings said.*
