Kealakekua Bay
Category: Hawai’i
Exploring the islands
Yellow Tang
Gecko and Plumeria
Were the telescopes built without permits?
This is another fairly common myth about the existing telescopes on Mauna Kea, that most of the telescopes were built without permits or issued “after-the-fact” permits after construction.
This is another myth built on a kernel of truth, the two earliest of the remaining thirteen telescopes were built without proper conservation district use permits in place. What is now Hoku Kea was built by the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories and given to the university a couple years later. The UH88 was built by the University of Hawaii in 1968.
As this was the State of Hawaii building on state land, apparently things were a bit lax. In retrospect this is no surprise, the state government was scarcely a decade old at this point and many of the administrative rules and regulations we now take for granted were still being written and implemented.
This is where the myth comes in, as somehow the other telescopes are accused of the same issue. The claim often made is that “most of these structures were un-permitted”. This is often claimed as part of the evidence for mismanagement by the university.
This is incorrect… All of the remaining telescopes were built with proper permits in place. The key permits are the Conservation District Use Permits or CDUP’s that allow the use of state land on the summit of Mauna Kea. Permit numbers and dates are listed in the table below…
Continue reading “Were the telescopes built without permits?”Keauhou Bay
Chinese Lion Dance
Was the real summit of Mauna Kea destroyed to make way for a telescope?
The idea that one of the existing telescopes sits on what was the real summit of Mauna Kea is persistent.
and NO there is NO RECTIFYING of the DAMAGES TO MAUNA KEA!!! Damnit man they sheered OFF the summit to INSERT the Kecks into The Pu’u that was the SUMMIT. What an ignorant thing to say!!!
Susan Rosier in a Facebook comment, 4 Aug 2019
While not a common claim this idea keeps popping up. It was even repeated by Kealoha Pisciotta under oath during the contested case. In her case she claimed it was the nearby summit ridge that was shaved off, and they “just moved the summit”.
Continue reading “Was the real summit of Mauna Kea destroyed to make way for a telescope?”The observatories pay no rent?
There are two thing that opponents neglect to mention in this accusation. The observatories do pay the state money, quite a bit actually, about $4.4 million per year. Opponents also fail to understand why that $1 rent came about and the history of astronomy on the mauna.
In often nasty accusations, the $1 rent is used to imply that the observatories get a free ride, costing the state and county, and therefore the taxpayers. This is the part that is completely false, the observatories not only pay their share of costs, but have significantly benefited the island economy in very direct ways.
Continue reading “The observatories pay no rent?”You cannot build TMT on conservation land?
The claim is often made that TMT cannot be built as the land its would be sited on is a designated resource conservation district. This is another claim is steadily repeated by telescope opponents on social media…
ITS CONSERVATION LAND! What part of that is so hard to understand? no more damage to our mountain.. please!! auwē!
Lynne Ven in a Facebook post
The crux of the claim is that being conservation district means that the telescope cannot be built near the summit of Mauna Kea as it is conservation land, that somehow the land is completely protected.
This claim argument depends on ignorance of the laws surrounding conservation lands. To anyone not familiar with the state land system this might make sense, but it is just is not true.
Continue reading “You cannot build TMT on conservation land?”The motivation for TMT is greed and profit?
It is said over, and over, and over… The telescopes exist to exploit the mauna, to extract profit, that they are built for greed. This is the single most repeated myth about the observatories, and it is the most insulting.
The fact is that the observatories make no profit, they are either government owned or operated by non-profit corporations. Actually the reverse is true, they are very good at spending money, and they spend a lot, observatories are expensive to operate with about $100 million put into the island economy.
What opponents seem oblivious to is in insisting that the telescopes are for profit it that they a being totally insulting. The insinuation of greed is as insulting as the worst things said against them. They repeat the insult over and over and do not care.
People work in astronomy to learn and explore the universe, they consider the pursuit of knowledge to be a noble goal. I have never met someone who worked in astronomy to get rich, the very idea is laughable. Like much of academia astronomy generally does not pay very well compared to some alternatives. Personally I could be making far more money working for some mainland electronics firm, and have a much smaller mortgage.
Continue reading “The motivation for TMT is greed and profit?”