Rising more than 6 miles from the seabed floor, Mauna Kea is the
tallest summit in the world.
To native
Hawaiians, the dormant volcano is the most sacred land in the entire Pacific.
It is the point where the sky and earth meet. They believe it is the site of
the genesis of their people, and it is the burial ground for their most revered
ancestors. Considered a temple and a house of worship, native Hawaiians
believed the gods created Mauna Kea for them to ascend to the heavens.
To scientists,
the mountaintop is the best location in the world to observe the stars and study
the origins of our universe.
"The summit
of Mauna Kea may, in fact, be the darkest site anywhere in the world ... which
of course means you can see deeper into space," said Doug Simons,
executive director at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. The CFHT sits with 12
other telescopes on top of the mountain.
Inspired by the
images being captured from the summit, a group of astronomers wants to build
the world's most sophisticated telescope at the top of Mauna Kea. It's called
the Thirty Meter Telescope, or TMT for short, because the primary mirror of the
telescope is 30 meters across. (In comparison, the famed Hubble telescope is
2.4 meters in diameter). The price for the TMT is $1.4 billion.
TMT will use adaptive optics, enabling the telescope to correct
for the blurring that usually occurs as a result of the Earth's atmosphere. It
will allow scientists from all over the globe to capture what they hope will be
the sharpest images yet of our universe.
That is, if they
can build it.
With 13
telescopes already dotting the landscape, some Hawaiians are saying enough is
enough. Protesters, or protectors as they like to refer to themselves, have
been camped out at the mountain base for months, committed to stopping the
construction of the massive telescope.
Things have
turned ugly. There have been several rounds of arrests and construction has
been halted more than once.
One of the
protectors, Kaho'okahi Kanuha, lived on the mountain for months and was one of
more than 30 people arrested when the TMT team started construction
in April.
"This is
simply not just about a telescope," Kanuha said. "It's desecration of
a sacred mountain; it's desecration of cultural sites, burial grounds."
Native Hawaiians
have challenged development on Mauna Kea since the 1960s when the University of
Hawaii started to turn the summit into a leading site for astronomical
research. Protesters believe construction has already gone too far and there
should be no more new structures.
It took nearly
seven years of public hearings and legal proceedings for the state of Hawaii to
grant the TMT team a permit to build the telescope on the summit. There was
public opposition early on, but the state felt the company met the legal
criteria to grant the conservation district use permit.
Now that the TMT
company is ready build, the debate over the telescope has hit a boiling point.
A group of opponents decided to take their pleas to court. Hawaii's Supreme
Court has taken on the case and will begin to hear oral arguments this month.
The permit granted
to the TMT team is designed to "conserve, protect, and preserve"
against overdevelopment and ensure structures do not have a "significant
and adverse" impact on the natural and cultural resources of Hawaii. But
the plaintiffs in the case believe the new telescope will negatively affect the
physical environment of the mountain, as well as interfere with the rituals
they practice.
"We are in favor of scientific advancement," said
Kealoha Pisciotta. "But what is happening up here is scientific
advancement that is required to occur at the destruction of our sacred place
and of a delicate ecosystem that is found nowhere else on the planet."
Those siding
with TMT argue the conversation laws are not meant to prohibit all development.
The laws support "appropriate" use of the land, which is what the
state of Hawaii and the TMT team say the new telescope will be.
"When we
started working on this almost a decade ago, we recognized there were deeply
held sensitivities of the top of the mountain," said Michael Bolte,
associate director for the Thirty Meter Telescope project. "We believed
there could be ways found to do the science without violating the sanctity of
the mountain.
"The real
question is: Can the sacred and the science coexist?"
In the spirit of
finding this common ground between the scientific community and Native
Hawaiians, Gov. David Ige issued a plan of action in May asking The University
of Hawaii, which officially manages the mountaintop, to decommission 25% of the
existing telescopes by the time TMT is completed. Ige also proposed that no
more telescopes be built on the summit.
TMT will pay the
state $1 million a year in rent; the current telescopes are virtually
rent-free. But to the protectors, this concession is not enough. The new
telescope will be built on a fresh site on the mountain, not the same site as
one of the past telescopes. And in July, Ige signed new rules into law making
it illegal to camp overnight on the mountain for safety reasons. Protesters
believe it was an act to silence them and prevent them from protecting their
land.
Regardless, many
native Hawaiians said they won't rest until the project is stopped.
"Whatever
day TMT and their machines decide to leave the mountain, that's when we can
take a little break," Kanuha said. "We'll be here as long as it
takes."
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