Mauna Kea telescopes amount to urban development, land commission is told

HILO >> The state Land Use Commission heard arguments Thursday that the 13 existing Mauna Kea observatories along with their related offices, parking lots and utilities amount to an inappropriate urban development on state conservation lands and that the area must be reclassified as urban before any further development takes place.

The petition is clearly aimed at the Thirty Meter Telescope, which has been granted state and county permission to build a new $1.4 billion high-tech observatory on the mountain. Construction of the TMT has been blocked for months by protesters camped on Mauna Kea Access Road who say they will not allow the telescope to be built.

The protesters, who call themselves kiai, or protectors, say the TMT would be a desecration of a mountain that many Hawaiians consider sacred.

If the LUC agrees with the petition by Hawaiian cultural practitioners Ku‘ulei Higashi Kanahele and Ahiena Kanahele, it would almost certainly spark a new legal battle over the telescope, which has already spent a decade obtaining permits and fending off court challenges.

Reclassifying even a portion of the summit area of Mauna Kea for urban uses would surely be a long, hard-fought process that could take years.

Manu Ka‘iama, a CPA and professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Shidler College of Business, told the commissioners they have a responsibility to preserve and protect Hawaii land, and said it was the LUC that designated Mauna Kea as conservation land in the first place.

The 13 observatories and the TMT are “inconsistent” with the definition of conservation land, and the commission has “a duty to enforce conservation district laws,” she said.

“I strongly believe that if UH had come to this body to begin with to actually attempt to rezone from conservation to urban, this commission would have never agreed after doing your homework and finding out just what Mauna Kea means to a majority of people, especially on Hawaii island,” Ka‘iama said.

She alleged the university “chose to circumvent that part of the law” and essentially created an industrial complex near the summit that is illegal in the conservation district.

University of Hawaii-Hilo Chancellor Bonnie Irwin asked the commission to reject the Kanaheles’ petition and affirm the conservation district permit. The UHH applied for and received the conservation permit that authorized the TMT project to move forward, and that permit was upheld by the state Supreme Court.

Irwin said extensive requirements were incorporated into the permit that address the concerns raised by the Kanaheles, and said the university is working on decommissioning five observatories.

“Therefore, the university is not and will not be seeking a district boundary amendment from the state Land Use Commission,” she said. However, Irwin acknowledged during questioning that the state Board of Regents or UH President David Lassner could overrule her and require that university seek such an amendment.

One of the key issues is whether the LUC has the authority to demand that the summit area be reclassified as urban before any further development takes place. Deputy Attorney General Bryan Yee said it does not.

State law generally tasks the Department of Land and Natural Resources with regulating the uses of conservation lands, and the state Land Board issued a conservation district use permit to TMT authorizing the project to proceed.

Yee told the commission that the Kanaheles’ petition “necessarily requires” the LUC to rule on the correctness of that conservation permit that the Land Board issued for TMT, “which is a matter not in your jurisdiction.”

It appears the commissioners are not entirely sure about that. Jonathan Scheuer, chairman of the commission, said Thursday that “the question being asked is a novel one.”

The LUC will hear additional testimony and arguments in the case today at the Grand Naniloa Hotel in Hilo.