Board orders consideration of Mauna Kea telescope plan

By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Big Island Bureau

A contested case hearing on a plan to add up to six new telescopes to the W.M. Keck Observatory will be reopened, under a new order by the state Board of Land and Natural Resources.

The board instructed hearings officer Michael Gibson to consider a management plan for the Keck site atop Mauna Kea, and to advise the board on whether to accept the plan.

An acceptable management plan is required before the board can grant a conservation district use permit that would allow the $50 million Keck project to be built.

The University of Hawai'i's Institute for Astronomy offered a management plan near the end of the contested case hearing. Gibson declined to consider it because he said it had been filed too late.

Gibson proposed that the institute submit the management plan to the board in a separate proceeding.

Instead, the Board of Land and Natural Resources has ordered Gibson to reopen the hearing and assess the management plan as part of the contested case process.

The outrigger project would allow astronomers to add up to six 1.8-meter telescopes around the observatory. The new telescopes are being financed by NASA.

Astronomers have been seeking the state conservation district use permit since 2001, but critics have delayed the project.

Native Hawaiian groups and the Sierra Club contend the project and other astronomy facilities on the summit have had a significant effect on the environment and cultural resources and say those effects need further study.

The mountain is considered sacred to some Hawaiians; they consider development on the summit a desecration of a religious site.

A federal judge last month ordered NASA to prepare a new federal environmental assessment on the project, but the Board of Land and Natural Resources ruled there is no reason to reject the conservation district use permit. The federal court decision has no bearing on the application for a state permit, the board ruled.