Telescope’s contested case hearing back on today

The Thirty Meter Telescope contested case hearing starts up again in Hilo today with a packed house of newly approved hearing participants and a variety of motions by TMT foes ranging from disqualifying the state attorney general’s office from advising the hearings officer to vacating the entire process.

In addition, the various parties have offered up a combined 125 names as potential witnesses who could give testimony during the upcoming evidentiary portion of the contested case hearing.

Today’s TMT pre-conference hearing is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Island of Hawaii YMCA, a larger venue than the Hilo State Conference Building conference room where the previous standing-room-only hearing was held.

It was at that June 17 hearing that hearings officer Riki May Amano approved 20 parties who will have a seat at the table during the contested case hearing.

The parties include just about everyone who asked for standing and showed up at the June 17 hearing. They include project developer TMT International Observatory LLC and Perpetuating Unique Educational Opportunities Inc., a new Native Hawaiian educational nonprofit group which supports the project.

OTHERS ALLOWED in were largely Native Hawaiians who oppose the project, among them Kahookahi Kanuha, a leader of the group that maintained a protest vigil on the mountain last year and blocked TMT work crews from reaching their summit work site.

Amano apparently is also giving a second chance to any of the 11 people who formally asked to be let in but didn’t show up at the June hearing. They will be reconsidered today if they had filed a motion to reconsider, according to an order by Amano.

The Mauna Kea Hui petitioners have offered two motions expected to be taken up today. One seeks to throw out the project’s conservation district use permit application, alleging that the University of Hawaii at Hilo improperly submitted the application when it should have been submitted by the landowner with control, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources. The motion also says the wrong parties were named in the application.

If granted, the motion would end the contested case hearing and potentially set back the $1.4 billion project for years.

Another motion asks that the state attorney general’s office be disqualified from providing legal advice to Amano, saying state attorneys have previously taken advocacy roles in support of the permit.

MAUNA KEA Hui attorney Richard Naiwieha Wurdeman said that state attorneys have consulted with UH and TMT attorneys in strategy sessions regarding enforcement actions against Hawaiian practitioners last year.

“We do not believe that these state attorneys could now provide fair and impartial advice in these proceedings to the hearing officer,” Wurdeman said.

The state, which denies the allegations behind both motions, has hired former state Attorney General David Louie and his Honolulu law firm of Kobayashi Sugita & Goda to represent it at the hearing to argue against the disqualification try.

A VARIETY of other motions before the hearing officer seek to vacate the entire process, remove the hearing officer, challenge jurisdiction and strike all motions, applications and decisions, which would essentially make the entire hearing moot.

There are also numerous motions to remove proposed witnesses.

In one of the motions, UH Hilo urges the hearing officer to “avoid admitting immaterial, irrelevant and unduly repetitious” testifiers, while the TMT corporation objects to any witnesses who might testify about “sovereignty, ceded lands, the existence of the Kingdom of Hawaii or the alleged illegal overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii.”

Amano, a former Hawaii island Circuit Court judge, has made attendance mandatory today for all parties.

The document library at the hearing’s state Department of Land and Natural Resources website now contains 176 documents.

One of those documents is an order in which Amano says finding a venue large enough for all the parties and others interested in the hearing has been a challenge. She said future meetings likely will be held at UH Hilo.

Amano also said she’s planning a site inspection on Mauna Kea during a day in August. And, depending on the number of witnesses and other issues, several days during October will be set aside for the evidentiary part of the contested case hearing.

THE ORIGINAL parties in the 2011 contested case hearing were applicant UH Hilo and the petitioners, the Mauna Kea Hui, which includes Mauna Kea Anaina Hou and Kealoha Pisciotta, Clarence Ching, the Flores-Case Ohana, Deborah J. Ward, Paul Neves and KAHEA: The Hawaiian Environmental Alliance.

The state Supreme Court in December ruled that the state Board of Land and Natural Resources violated the state Constitution when it formally approved the project’s conservation district use permit in 2011 before holding a contested case hearing. The court invalidated the permit and sent it back to the board for a new contested case hearing.

Construction on the cutting-edge telescope has been stalled since April 2015, when protesters occupied the mountain and blocked work crews from getting to the site.

Despite the delays, the manufacturing of telescope parts has continued in the project’s member nations, which include the United States, India, China, Japan and Canada, and TMT officials are evaluating alternative sites in the event the project doesn’t move forward on Mauna Kea by April.

The TMT partners were hoping the observatory — expected to be one of the largest telescopes in the world and capable of seeing more than 13 billion light-years away — would become operational by 2024, but it now appears first light would occur later.