For the first time, NASA has identified a "reasonable alternative" site for the $50 million Outrigger project, in Spain's Canary Islands, where a new 33-foot telescope modeled after Keck's is under construction.

The Outrigger project is part of NASA's Origins program that will search for evidence of planets around nearby stars with the potential to support life, and to study newborn stars and some of the farthest and faintest objects in space.

About 90 people gathered at the Hawai'i Naniloa Resort in Hilo, a number of them critical of plans for new telescopes.

Moani Akaka, a former Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustee, said, "We feel that enough is enough. We want no further development of telescopes on Mauna Kea."

Akaka charged that astronomers over the years have been "only concerned about the skies, while all these decades were allowed to pollute our sacred mountain."

The environmental impact process concluded there would be no effect on traditional cultural practices if the project were built in the Canary Islands, "so why don't they do it?" she said.

Cory Harden of the Sierra Club's Moku Loa Group said stricter monitoring of wastewater on the mountain is needed, and higher rents should be charged to the astronomy facilities to generate money for environmental protection on the mountain. The University of Hawai'i now charges a gratis rent of a dollar a year for facilities there, she said.

"Astronomy can occur in many places, but many Hawaiian traditions carried out on Mauna Kea cannot be carried out anywhere else in the world," Harden said. "If the people of the Canary Islands want the Outriggers — and they must be asked — that site looks like a far better choice."

Native Hawaiian organizations have challenged continued development of observatories on 13,796-foot Mauna Kea, which is traditionally sacred to Hawaiians as the meeting place of the sky god Wakea and the earth mother Papa, who eventually became the parents of the first ancestor of the Hawaiian people.

UH began developing the summit of Mauna Kea for astronomy in the 1960s. It now has 13 observatories and more major telescopes than any other mountain peak.

Hawaiians argue that astronomy projects have had severe impacts on a sacred place, and the environmental impact statement confirms it, stating that "from a cumulative perspective, the impact to cultural resources on Mauna Kea is substantial and adverse."

However, the report also concludes that the Outrigger project itself "would have a small, incremental impact."

According to the recently released draft environmental impact statement for the project, the Outrigger array could be built around Gran Telescopio de Canarias, which is being constructed about 7,900 feet above sea level and about 1,100 miles southwest of Madrid.

"There are no groups that consider the (Canary Islands site) to be sacred or of religious importance," according to the report.

The draft environmental impact statement for the Outrigger project evaluated the scientific capabilities of the Outrigger at each of various possible alternate sites, and concluded Mauna Kea was superior to the Canary Islands.

If approved, construction would begin in 2005, and the new telescopes would start operating in 2007.