Dissenting views open second hearing on telescope

HILO >> Testimony got off to a slow, bumpy start Thursday in what is expected to be a weeks-long contested case hearing in Hilo that could determine the fate of plans to build the most powerful telescope in the world at the summit of Mauna Kea.

About two dozen people and organizations have been approved to participate in the hearing to determine whether a critical conditional-use permit should be issued to allow the $1.4 billion Thirty Meter Telescope to be built on conservation land on Hawaii’s tallest mountain.

Participants in the contested case began the day by protesting that the state had not given proper public notice of the hearing, which attracted an audience of about 100 participants and spectators at the Grand Naniloa Hotel.

Hearings Officer Riki May Amano replied that two notices were published, including one that set the hearing for Tuesday. That opening date for the hearing was later pushed back to Thursday.

When Amano attempted to move forward with witness testimony, more than a half-dozen of the participants in the contested case objected because a lawyer for the University of Hawaii characterized the university’s first witness as “an expert in land use planning and analysis.”

“What the university is attempting to do is to stack the deck and say they have experts and everybody else isn’t, so I object,” said Lanny Sinkin, who is representing a traditional Hawaiian faith known as The Temple of Lono.

Dwight Vicente, who said he is representing the Hawaiian kingdom in the hearing, said the first witness “appears to be an illegal alien” who is attempting to apply “foreign law” in what is actually the kingdom of Hawaii.

After about a half-hour of discussion of those and other objections, witness Perry J. White began to testify. White is principal planner of Planning Solutions Inc. and was the main author of the conservation district use permit application.

White offered about 10 minutes of testimony on the TMT project and the legal requirements for projects on conservation land, and his presentation was followed by more than four hours of cross-examination by eight of the opponents of the project. Questioning of White by other intervenors in the case is scheduled to continue Monday.

This is the second contested case hearing for the TMT project. The Hawaii Supreme Court in December ruled that the state Board of Land and Natural Resources erred when it issued a conservation district use permit for the project before it held the previous contested case proceeding in 2011.

The court ruled that by approving the project before the 2011 contested case hearing, it failed to consider the evidence presented during the hearing. The court then ordered the Land Board to hold a new contested case hearing.

Representatives of the university, the astronomical community and the Hawaii island business community have worked for years to support and encourage development of the TMT, which had been scheduled to start construction in 2015 and become operational in 2024. The university argued in its opening contested case brief that the TMT project would cement Hawaii “as the world’s premier place to study astronomy.”

Work on the project was repeatedly blocked last year by passionate opponents of the TMT, including protesters who contend the mountain is sacred. Opponents of the project argued in their opening hearing brief that the university failed to meet the legal requirements for issuing a new permit and that the Land Board has failed in its duty to properly manage the conservation land on the mountain.

The upper regions of the mountain “have long been recognized as ecologically significant, culturally sacred and extremely fragile,” the opponents of the project argued. “Unfortunately, instead of protecting Mauna Kea’s resources from urbanization, BLNR has facilitated it.”

The contested case hearing in Hilo was supervised by uniformed officers from the DLNR’s Division of Conservation and Resource Enforcement, with officers stationed both inside and outside the hearing room.

White testified that the purpose of the rules governing the conservation district land on the mountain “is not to prohibit land uses such as observatories in the conservation district. It’s to regulate them — in other words, to manage the district’s use in a responsible and very respectful way.”

“That is why, for example, commercial fishing is allowed in coastal waters, which are in the conservation district,” he said. “That’s why commercial logging can be permitted in some areas of the conservation district.”

Deborah J. Ward, one of the intervenors, asked White to read from a section of the environmental impact statement that indicated that the existing development of more than a dozen telescopes on the mountain has had a “substantial, significant and adverse” impact on the mountain.

White said the application made it clear the TMT by itself would not have a significant impact on the mountain, and the addition of the project “will not substantially alter the present condition of the natural resources of the area.”

However, White acknowledged under questioning that development of the TMT would alter the terrain, and construction of the new observatory would affect the habitat of insects and other life forms. Construction would also temporarily cause dust and noise, he agreed.

The TMT project site is 5 acres, and the new observatory would be 187 feet tall, roughly the height of an 18-story building.

B. Pualani Case, a cultural practitioner, questioned what the impact of years of construction would be on cultural practitioners who wanted to chant or engage in ceremonies on the northern plateau where the TMT is planned. White replied there would be noise and other impacts from the construction.

Case also asked White what the word “sacred” means to him and whether he believes Mauna Kea is sacred. Amano rejected that last question, saying it did not relate to White’s report on the TMT project.