A controversial measure that would remove the University of Hawaii from its role as manager of the Mauna Kea summit will be heard in a public hearing this afternoon before a state Senate committee.
At the same time, UH has stepped up its criticism of House Bill 2024, telling reporters Monday that it would effectively kill astronomy atop Hawaii’s tallest mountain.
Doug Simons, director of the UH’s Institute for Astronomy, said the bill does not leave enough time for the complicated process of renewing observatory subleases and securing a new land authorization for the summit before the current lease expires in 2033.
“I’ve been around long enough to recognize an approaching hurricane,” he said. “It’s just too big of a risk. It’s an unacceptable level of risk given the impact if it doesn’t go spectacularly well.”
As proposed, the bill would form a new, independent entity to oversee the observatories and the surrounding
land following a three-year transition period.
The new governing board, which would include Native Hawaiian representation, would be tasked with developing a plan for managing land uses, human activities, access, stewardship and overall operations on the mountain, among other things.
The bill requires the new entity to develop a framework to limit
astronomy development and create a plan to return the summit to its natural state after ground-based observatories become obsolete.
The legislation grew out of the work of the Mauna Kea Working Group, which was formed in 2021 by the state House of Representatives.
This year many thought that even if the bill passed the House, it faced a tenuous future in the Senate’s Water and Land Committee, whose chair opposes the measure. Last year Sen. Lorraine Inouye (D, Kaupulehu-Waimea-North Hilo) refused to take up the bill that established the Mauna Kea Working Group, leaving the Senate out of the panel’s work.
But HB 2024 was not assigned to her committee and instead went to the Higher Education Committee, led by UH critic Sen. Donna Mercado Kim (D, Kalihi Valley-Moanalua-Halawa).
A hearing on the measure will be heard by Kim’s committee at 3 p.m. in Conference Room 229 at the state Capitol and during videoconferencing. A livestream will air on the Senate’s YouTube channel.
Simons, former head of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and Gemini Observatory, said the measure puts the existing observatories atop Mauna Kea in “extreme peril.”
The existing telescopes,
he said, operate under
agreements that require
decommissioning and site restoration by 2033, a process that would take six years to complete beforehand.
That leaves about five years to secure new land authorization agreements with the observatories before they must begin that process. But if HB 2024 is enacted as law, UH will no longer be able to support the complicated lease negotiations that are going on now, Simons said.
“Basically, the negotiations will go into a free fall. And nobody knows when there will be a new entity to pick up the pieces,” he said, adding that a three-year transition into a functioning authority is “spectacularly optimistic.”
“We have no idea when that new authority will be even remotely in a position to take on a daunting task that has to absolutely occur within five years or so,” he said.
Simons said that if lawmakers approve the bill, they will be gambling with an industry that pumps
$110 million into the state’s economy each year. The loss of astronomy atop Mauna Kea would not only undermine the Institute for Astronomy, but have far-reaching negative impacts on astronomy across the nation and the world.
“It’s a wildly unacceptable level of risk, given the positive impact of astronomy in Hawaii and the world. This goes way beyond our shores,” he said.
Greg Chun, executive director of the UH Hilo Center for Maunakea Stewardship, said supporting astronomy has been state policy for decades, and now this bill puts its future in the hands of an unknown entity.
“That’s a conversation that requires a whole lot more discussion. It can’t be left to one body,” Chun said.
