Environmentalists and Native Hawaiians criticized the state Department of Land and Natural Resources' decision Friday to grant the permit, with activist Kealoha Pisciotta calling it "Hawai'i's decision-making at its worst — closed sessions, ignored environmental studies and support for special interests over the public."

The conditional use permit is the last major state permit required for the project, although NASA still needs to complete its environmental impact statement. If the EIS is approved on schedule, construction on Outriggers would begin in 2005, and the new telescopes would begin operating in 2007.

Pisciotta, who is president of the cultural group Mauna Kea Anaina Hou, and Nelson Ho of the Sierra Club announced in a written statement that "litigation against the board now seems likely" because their concerns over the project have not been addressed.

The $50 million Outriggers project would put up to six new 6-foot telescopes around the existing W.M. Keck Observatory, which already boasts the largest and most powerful optical telescopes in the world.

Outriggers already has been the focus of a prolonged legal battle, and NASA disclosed earlier this year in its environmental impact statement for the Outriggers project that it has located an alternative site for the project in Spain's Canary Islands.

Critics at public hearings around the state urged NASA to take the project elsewhere, but astronomers and business leaders worry that losing the Outrigger project could hurt Hawai'i's reputation as a world leader in astronomy.

The 13,796-foot Mauna Kea is traditionally sacred for 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 Mauna Kea for astronomy in the 1960s, and the summit now has 13 observatories and more major telescopes than any other mountain peak.

As part of the effort to win approval for the Outriggers project on Mauna Kea, the University of Hawai'i's Institute for Astronomy applied to the state land board for a conditional use permit, which is required because the summit area of Mauna Kea is conservation land.

Critics of the project demanded a contested case hearing on the use permit in early 2002, and the hearing was held last year. Peter Young, chairman of the Board of Land and Natural Resources, signed the final decision approving the permit Friday.

Young said the contested case proceeding is different from a public meeting handled in open session, and there was no legal reason to make the final decision on the permit in public. He said the board decision is this case was handled the same way other decisions in other contested case hearings have been handled.

The board concluded that "with the conditions imposed, we can fulfill our duty to conserve, protect and preserve our important natural and cultural resources while letting the project go forward."

The board ruled the cumulative impacts of astronomy development on the mountain cannot be mitigated under the current management structure of the mountain.

To improve the system, the board instructed the Office of Mauna Kea Management under the state Board of Regents to monitor the Outriggers project to ensure it complies with the requirements of the permit.

Critics of the project had urged the land board to postpone a decision on the use permit until NASA has completed an environmental impact statement on the Outriggers project, and were surprised that the board instead pressed ahead and issued a decision last week, said the Sierra Club's Ho.

"I think astronomers panicked when NASA's draft EIS didn't support their assertion that the observatories had had no impact on the mountain," Ho said. "Now they're worried NASA, which is funding the Outriggers, may take them to the Canary Islands."

Young said that is not true.

"Our interest, our focus, our attention was strictly on Mauna Kea," Young said.