Judge rejects NASA's telescope impact survey
By Curtis Lum and Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writers
A federal judge has ordered NASA to prepare a new environmental assessment on its controversial $50 million expansion of the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, calling a previous assessment "inadequate."
The so-called Keck "outrigger" project would allow astronomers to add up to six 1.8-meter telescopes around the W.M. Keck Observatory. The new telescopes are being financed by NASA and would improve the images taken by Keck.
But the Office of Hawaiian Affairs has claimed that the project would have a significant impact on environmental and cultural resources on the summit. In April 2002, OHA filed a federal lawsuit to force NASA to prepare a comprehensive environmental impact statement.
In her ruling issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway agreed with OHA that NASA's environmental assessment, which declared that there would be no significant impact, was flawed.
"The court specifically holds that the present EA does not adequately consider the impact of development of the outrigger telescope site when added to other past, present and reasonably foreseeable actions," Mollway wrote.
She added, "NASA's cumulative impacts section, which takes up only three pages in the 125-page EA, does not include an appropriate analysis." Mollway said that NASA "misunderstands the nature of the 'cumulative impact analysis' " required by federal law.
NASA spokesman Don Savage today would say only that the agency is still reviewing the decision.
But attorney Lisa Bail, representing the University of Hawai'i Institute for Astronomy, said today that the ruling is not expected to impede the project greatly, largely because Mollway denied an OHA request that the state permitting process be halted while the new assessment is prepared. The state Board of Land and Natural Resources is considering a UH conservation district use application and held a contested case hearing earlier this year.
UH officials agree that the Mauna Kea summit is a "unique resource," Bail said.
"This only allows us to go back and assess how we can all share the summit," she said.
Opponents to the project have said it would damage the environment and desecrate sites sacred to Hawaiians.
"We believe that (a more thorough) analysis will reveal that the cultural and environmental impacts of the outrigger telescopes will be significant and that a more detailed EIS should be completed," OHA chairwoman Haunani Apoliona said in a written statement.
Lea Hong, attorney for OHA, said NASA attorneys have said that a new environmental assessment could take six to 12 months to complete. She said she believes NASA has three options: redo the assessment and come out with the same findings of no significant impact; do a more complete assessment and find that there is a potential for significant impacts, which would trigger an environmental impact statement; or go directly to an EIS, which is a more detailed analysis.
"OHA's position is that NASA needs to follow the law and that the summit of Mauna Kea is of incomparable cultural and environmental value to the state of Hawai'i and that any further development on the summit of Mauna Kea needs to comply with all environmental laws and be subject to the highest environmental scrutiny," Hong said.
It was not known what effect Mollway's ruling will have on the start of the project. In the environmental assessment, NASA said it would take 16 months to build and install four of the telescopes and another six months for the final two.
Hong acknowledged, however, that neither an EA or EIS will stop the project.
"That's a fact," she said. "But because these resources are precious and unique, OHA wants both state and federal agencies to scrutinize plans for development on the summit of Mauna Kea very closely."
Although she ordered a new assessment, Mollway declined a request by OHA to require NASA to conduct an EIS. Mollway also threw out OHA claims that the space agency failed to make a reasonable and good-faith effort to identify historic or cultural sites on the summit of Mauna Kea.
The outrigger telescope project also requires a permit from the state Board of Land and Natural Resources. A hearing on the matter was held last month, but a decision has not yet been made.
