Ige reaffirms support for TMT, Mauna Kea stewardship

Gov. David Ige continued to offer support for building the Thirty Meter Telescope atop Mauna Kea and improving the state’s stewardship of the mountain while speaking last week at Oahu’s Windward Community College.

Ige addressed the subject in response to a question from the audience regarding arrests of Native Hawaiian opponents of the $1.4 billion project who see construction on Hawaii’s tallest mountain as desecration of sacred land.

“As governor, I am committed to enforcing the law,” he said in a video of his talk at the community forum Monday, which was posted on YouTube.

Also reflecting his earlier comments on the subject, Ige said the state will allow the project to proceed unless the state Supreme Court, which is hearing a legal challenge of the project’s Conservation District land use permit, rules against it.

Protesters, who have also raised issues of Hawaiian sovereignty and concerns over environmental impacts, have blocked construction vehicles three times since late March. Dozens have been arrested on the mountain.

As a result, the TMT International Observatory has kept grubbing and grading work at the project site, located on the northern side of the mountain below the summit, on hold.

“As a personal note, I do support the project,” Ige said.

“I do believe that there is an opportunity that the project represents for our community to be a leader in astronomy that we don’t have elsewhere.

“At the same time, I do believe that we haven’t done a good job with managing the summit. I do believe there are too many people who have access to the summit.”

The summit at 13,796 feet above sea level — the tallest point in the Pacific — is popular with tourists, astronomers and Hawaiian cultural practitioners.

Thirteen telescopes currently sit on the mountain, but that number will be reduced to 10 by the time TMT is expected to be complete in the next decade, mainly in response to Ige’s call for reducing astronomy’s existing footprint at the summit by 25 percent.

At 180 feet tall, TMT would be the largest observatory on Mauna Kea. The University of Hawaii, which leases much of the mountain from the state, says no other new telescope sites will be developed, though concerns remain over the existing impact to the landscape.

The telescopes to be removed are the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory, UH-Hilo’s Hoku Kea telescope, and UKIRT, formerly known as the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope and now owned by UH-Manoa. None of those sites will be reused.

Expediting decommissioning of those telescopes hasn’t been popular with university faculty, who see their astronomy programs as being disproportionately affected, and the general astronomy community. Protesters also have said the decision doesn’t affect their stance on the TMT project.

Still, Ige at the meeting noted it as evidence of improved stewardship and part of his “10-point plan” for the mountain that was announced in May.

Several aspects of that plan, including the formation of a new cultural advisory council and the university returning more than 10,000 acres of the mountain to the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, remain a work in progress.

Jodi Leong, a spokeswoman for the governor, said no appointments have been made for the council, which would advise DLNR and other state agencies.

That would be separate from another cultural advisory council that works under UH’s Office of Mauna Kea Management.

“The Governor and administration are in the process of working through the Mauna Kea 10-point plan,” she said in an email. “The formation of the advisory council is part of that process.” No timeline was offered.

Issues involving transfer of the land outside the astronomy precinct and the length of a new master lease for land covering the observatory facilities could be resolved by the end of the year, said Dan Meisenzahl, a UH spokesman.

UH’s existing lease for the mountain expires in 2033; a new lease would be needed for astronomy to continue beyond that date. An environmental impact statement for a new lease is on hold amid the protests.

“As soon as all of that is worked out,” Meisenzahl said, “which should be by the end of the year, if not sooner, it can be determined if we can continue the current EIS process with amended facts or if we need to start from scratch.”

The new lease request is expected to become the next battle ground between supporters of astronomy on the mountain, considered one of the world’s top places for viewing the heavens, and those who see it as too sacred to allow construction.

To many Hawaiian cultural practitioners, the mountain is the island’s sacred piko, or center, and the place where the sky, earth and stars, and the gods that represent them, find union.

UH also is in the process of revising proposed administrative rules for Mauna Kea which could give OMKM more authority to regulate commercial activity and vehicle access to the summit.

Email Tom Callis at tcallis@hawaiitribune- herald.com.