Editorial: Complex, murky Mauna Kea plan

The ethical directive to doctors is to “first, do no harm.” Lawmakers should adopt that same approach when engineering a major change in governance, such as what’s now on the agenda for management of lands and astronomy research on the summit of Mauna Kea.

This afternoon, members of a House and Senate conference committee will meet on House Bill 2024, a measure that would remake the way culturally and environmentally sensitive zones would be managed atop the mountain. This has proven to be much easier said than done, and even the most benign version of the measure could do more harm than good.

Management would become even more complex, involving the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, the University of Hawaii and a new entity, the Mauna Kea Stewardship and Oversight Authority.

This reform attempt arises out of proposals by a working group reflecting dissatisfaction among some Native Hawaiians that UH has not taken proper care of the mountain.

There are particular reasons to reject this bill, given that a new authority would be created at a time when a lot of things are in flux.

Officials of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy have aired concerns about the proposal to create a authority taking over management of the summit from UH. Its director, Doug Simons, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that this entity would not be left with enough time to renew observatory subleases and a new land authorization for the summit before current leases expire in 2033.

That would be less of a worry, granted, under the current Senate Draft 2 of the bill. Greg Chun, executive director of the UH Hilo Center for Maunakea Stewardship, said Monday that “obviously, SD2 is much improved” over the original version, noting inserted language in this draft that acknowledges astronomy as a state policy.

But even this compromise does not solve all the problems. Chun rightly points out that the new authority itself is not likely to be self-sustaining after four years, as SD2 proposes, because the 9,450 acres of conservation land under its custody would not produce significant revenue.

There are almost certainly going to be murky jurisdictional problems. The authority would have representation of various stakeholders, including DLNR and UH. But as this draft defines it, it would work “in conjunction” with DLNR to manage the conservation lands.

As for UH, it would be responsible for the care and management of some 550 acres of land, the astronomy-research campus where the observatories are located.

But beyond the terse statement of support of astronomy as a policy of the state, vestiges of anti- astronomy hostility remain in the bill. A new “framework” is mandated for UH, one that “may include limitations on the number of observatories and astronomy-related facilities or an astronomy facility footprint limitation.”

Further, UH “may establish a set of principles for returning the astronomy research lands to their natural state at such time that ground-based observatories lose their academic or research value.”

May include? May establish? Regardless of the wiggle room those caveats provide, the whole thing does not communicate much real commitment to astronomy.

The UH Economic Research Organization in 2019 estimated astronomy’s total economic impact on Hawaii at $221 million, supporting the employment of 1,313. Hawaii-based astronomy’s contribution to scientific discovery has been incalculable.

Stewardship by UH has been on an improvement path for years already, and it’s possible to fix what is broken. Lawmakers must not let one of Hawaii’s star-bright success stories go dark.