Caelum Moor's fans are trying to win its freedom from water-treatment-plant limbo.

It's hard to hide 540 tons of pink granite, especially if it once formed the centerpiece of an artwork known as the "Stonehenge of North Texas." To put 540 tons into perspective, that's 362 Honda Accords, 3,085 Shetland ponies, or 5,432 mid-sized devil worshippers. But for the past five years, Arlington officials have done a fairly good job of storing the 22 Caelum Moor stones in a place that does not attract much attention.

Just ask Robert Regan, whose backyard lends him a long-range view of the huge stones that sit behind a fence at the Pierce Burch Water Treatment Plant in his wooded neighborhood in west Arlington. "I forget they are there until someone reminds me, or I look real close," he said.

But if the work's creator and a few officials have their way, Caelum Moor -- which some alleged was a site of pagan worship shortly before it was dismantled -- will soon live again as art. California sculptor and retired teacher Norm Hines has been trying for the past two years to talk Arlington officials into resurrecting his work.

The stones, which stood as high as 34 feet, were once part of a 5.5-acre sculpture park valued then at $3 million. The setting, just east of The Parks at Arlington mall, included a 350-seat natural amphitheater, winding lake, landscaping, and a fountain.

Caelum Moor was commissioned by the Kelton Mathes Development Corp. as the grand highlight of an ambitious 340-acre high-tech business park. After studying megalithic stone groupings in Great Britain, a meticulous and impassioned Hines spent about a year working on the project -- named Caelum after a remote constellation and Moor for the windswept moors of Scotland -- in a granite quarry in Marble Falls, Texas. He spent another year sculpting the Arlington grounds, finishing the project in 1986. The sculpture park, visible along Interstate 20, drew immediate and favorable attention.

The business development was another matter. Like many of that time, it went bust, and Kelton Mathes declared bankruptcy in 1989. A new owner, Dallas-based Windstar Properties, less interested in art than in developing the land, wanted to get rid of the sculpture. Selling, or even giving away, 540 tons of rock isn't easy. Windstar eventually donated the stones to the city as an alternative to simply burying them on site.

The city paid about $40,000 to move them to the treatment plant in 1997, where they were unceremoniously laid down like huge railroad ties. With no place or money to re-install the sculptures -- and with religious conservatives warning of pagan practices that the stones might inspire -- the city punted.

"There has been some interest from other groups, including an arts foundation in the Dayton, Ohio, area, to restore this sculpture," Hines, 63, said this week. "But those offers won't remain forever."

Arlington Mayor Elzie Odom, to whom Hines first wrote in May 2000, said he has heard from the Ohio group and others interested in Caelum Moor. But he'd like to see the art remain in Arlington.

"I'm not sure those groups understand the costs involved in moving the stones," said Odom, who was on the council during the original controversy. "We have some sites here that could possibly be used, like River Legacy Parks. But nothing definite has been worked out."

Arlington's Arts Advisory Board will take up the question of Caelum Moor's potential resurrection this spring, said chairwoman Marjie Barrett. The group makes recommendations to the city council. Barrett, an associate professor of social work at the University of Texas at Arlington, said most of the panel members she's talked to support returning the work to public view. However, serious questions would have to be resolved for that to happen, including where the artwork would be placed and who would pay the expected high costs of the move.

"It's a hot-button issue for a certain group of people, but I think they are a small group," she said. That small group includes some local ministers and church members who claimed, during several stormy public meetings in 1996, that the site was a favorite place of worship for pagans. Their claims were bolstered by some self-described witches who said in published reports at the time that they would use the relocated park for ceremonies. The controversy was even covered by CNN. Police, however, said they never received any complaints or reports of such ceremonies.

The Watchman Fellowship, an Arlington-based evangelical Christian ministry that focuses on "new religious movements, cults, the occult, and the New Age," includes Caelum Moor on its website on a list of "cults and religions." The organization, which has offices in several states, describes it as a "private park [now closed] containing menhirs [large upright stones] similar to those found at Stonehenge. Newspaper reports claim trespassers have used the site for pagan ceremonies."

The site adds that the fellowship is "in no way implying that the followers or leaders [of cults] are necessarily evil or immoral people. It simply means that such groups seem to promote doctrine or practices which may be considered outside the realm of historic Christianity." Watchman president James Walker could not be reached for comment.

Hines and others said the ministers' claims -- as well as the high costs of establishing a new park site -- helped put Caelum Moor to rest in early 1997. Odom disagreed. The mayor said the religious controversy played little part in keeping the piece under wraps. "The new developer was going to break up the stones and bury them, unless the city came in and moved them," he said. "We took them to save them."

City committees considered installing the stones at the Tarrant County College Southeast Campus or just north of the original sculpture park, but the level of controversy and cost shoved the sculpture into a five-year limbo.

Several residents said it was a shame the work has been out of public view so long. Arlington historian and preservationist Dorothy Rencurrel recalled attending performances by Theatre Arlington at the amphitheatre. "It was something we had that was really unique," she said.

Velma Bogart, a resident of nearby Dalworthington Gardens, said the pieces were not only pleasing to the eyes, but to the ears. "There was one set of stones you could stand by, and they sort of blocked out the traffic from the highway," she said. "The wind blowing through them made a sound of its own. It was quite an experience to stand there."

Hines, hard at work on a piece in Fiji, said he's afraid that religious objections to Caelum Moor may force his sculpture to be moved out of Texas.

"As much as I would love to have this piece remain in Texas, given the controversy and everything else, it might be worthwhile to the city to consider other offers," he said.