Posted on: Tuesday, November 2, 2004

NASA project's critics plan suit

By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Big Island Bureau

HILO, Hawai'i — Critics of NASA's Outriggers telescopes said yesterday a new lawsuit over the project "seems likely" after a state panel approved the last major permit needed before construction can begin.

State Board of Land and Natural Resources Chairman Peter Young on Friday approved an order granting the conditional use permit for the $50 million Outriggers project, ending a drawn-out contested case hearing and clearing a significant hurdle facing the project.

NASA still needs to complete its federal environmental impact statement. If the statement is approved on schedule, construction on Outriggers would begin next year, and the new telescopes would begin operating in 2007.

Environmentalists and Native Hawaiians criticized the Board of Land and Natural Resources' decision 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."

"This land board had a chance to start a new era of trust — and missed it," she said in a written statement.

Pisciotta, 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 still have not been addressed.

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

The new telescopes are expected to enhance the images taken by the Keck. The project is part of NASA's Origins Program to study how stars and planetary systems form, and whether habitable planets exist around nearby stars.

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

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.

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.

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

Critics of the project had urged the land board to postpone a decision on the use permit until NASA has completed its environmental impact statement on the Outriggers project. They said they 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 was not what prompted the board's decision. "Our interest, our focus, our attention was strictly on Mauna Kea," Young said.

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.

Young, who granted the conditional use permit Friday, said the contested case proceeding is different from a public meeting handled in open session. The land board heard closing arguments in the case in open session, but there was no legal reason to make the final decision on the permit in public, he said. Young said the board decision is this case was handled the same way other decisions in other contested case hearings have been handled.

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 935-3916.