
Hawaii Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Building Thirty Meter Telescope - okket
http://www.staradvertiser.com/2018/10/30/breaking-news/supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-tmt/
======
ergothus
The actual legal issues in question are barely touched on in the article:

> But some environmentalists and Native Hawaiian groups say the spread of
> observatories on the summit has polluted the mountain, interfering with
> traditional cultural and religious practices, or are actually infringing on
> the sovereignty of the Hawaiian kingdom.

The links in the article to the actual decisions are broken (for me at least)
The article [https://bigislandnow.com/2018/08/08/supreme-court-rules-
in-f...](https://bigislandnow.com/2018/08/08/supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-
state-in-appeal-relating-to-tmt/) implies that the issues were largely
procedural and this decision isn't actually deciding if any of the above are
true.

So I'm left seeing big claims, but no real idea on if those claims are true-
but-ignored, mostly-not-true, or a fringe-group-only-viewpoint. (While the
media coverage IMPLIES that those claims ARE decided, and it's that
implication that bugs me)

~~~
rtkwe
> infringing on the sovereignty of the Hawaiian kingdom

Is there actually any legally recognized sovereignty for Hawaii or native
Hawaiians? Tried doing a quick search but it all came back with an ongoing
sovereignty movement but nothing similar to the Native American tribes.

~~~
ergothus
My understanding (based on visiting hawaii as a tourist and not much else) is
that no, there's not a US-legally recognized sovereignty, but there is a step
back from:

* "They voluntarily joined the US" language

* the repression of culture - in particular but not limited to language, which was apparently ruthlessly quashed for a long while and is enjoying a lot more respect today, relatively speaking.

In a courtroom I doubt this would count for much, but in a war of PR releases
it can be significant, and most of what I found about this case was press
releases.

~~~
jmisavage
There's a rich history of corporations and the us government screwing over
Hawaiians. The monarchy was overthrown by a group of businessmen and sugar
planters after they forced Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate. Two years later it
became a US territory against the wishes of the natives. Then the sugar
industry help keep it a territory for 60 years because they could import cheap
foreign labor.

~~~
adrr
History of Hawaii is all about using force to take land from the population.
First settler where from the Marquesas Islands and they were conquered by the
Tahitians.

~~~
rootoor
What’s your point?

Are you saying that it doesn’t matter that sovergty was taken violently from
the Hawaiians because their ancestors conquered the original inhabitants
hundreds of years ago?

Would it be fair if Russia came in and took Hawaii from the US because the
“History of Hawaii is all about using force to take land from the population”?

~~~
bufferoverflow
But how far back in history do you want to go? Why is it that pre-US owners
are the real ones and not the pre-pre-US ones?

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jjcm
I'm glad this got pushed through - environmentalists in Hawaii can be an
interesting bunch, and often choose to blockade things that are high profile
simply to get their message out, even if the ecological impact is highly
minimal. A great example of this in the past was the Hawaii Superferry[1],
which was blockaded by environmentalists who said that it would damage the
reef. Which while it might be true, standard shipping freighters already
travelled the same route and had a higher ecological impact than the lighter
dual-hulled ferry, which would have taken a lot of the shipping volume of the
more damaging ships. By blocking the ferry, the environmentalists got a lot of
publicity, but ultimately the reef ended up suffering more as the ferry got
shut down.

With this, the ecological impact will be highly minimal (based on the impact
of the existing observatory and the environmental studies done after the plans
were drawn up), but it's very high profile so a natural target for them. I'm
very glad that the court pushed it through as they had no data to back up
their claims that that it would pollute the mountain. The claim that it
interfered with traditional and cultural practices has some merit, but that's
only because the entire mountain of Mauna Kea is considered sacred - nothing
about the peak itself is special. Also, there's already a ton of observatories
up there[2], so it wouldn't be changing the status quo in any way. Overall I
personally saw their protests as more political than based on arguments with
merit.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii_Superferry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii_Superferry)
[2] [https://i.imgur.com/7TjQd52.png](https://i.imgur.com/7TjQd52.png)

~~~
Steko
The “SuperFerry” was a huge boondoggle that tried to endrun around the EIS
process which dozens of other ferrys around the country seemed to have no
trouble complying with. The economics never supported a passenger ferry and
the whole thing was a smokescreen to milk DoD.

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kylecordes
I visited the top of Mauna Kea a couple of months ago, as a tourist. It is a
fascinating place, already so populated with telescopes that it is tough to
imagine how adding another (likely built more carefully than older ones) could
cause grave damage, interference with other uses of the area, etc.

On the other hand: some of the telescopes have been there many years and are
probably somewhat obsolete by today's standards, producing little new science.
Perhaps one of the existing structures could have been removed to make room
for the TMT, to lessen conflict.

~~~
jlmorton
> Perhaps one of the existing structures could have been removed to make room
> for the TMT, to lessen conflict.

TMT project will in fact remove three old telescopes.

~~~
lutorm
_The Governor_ decided that three telescopes would come down. One of these is
the tiny UH Hilo education telescope, so it's not really anything like the
others. Many people think that this particular telescope, the only one whose
purpose is directly aimed at educating the local astronomy students, should
_not_ be the one sacrificed on the altar of the TMT, especially since its
local impact is practically zero.

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PopePompous
I don't think this ruling changes much. The TMT project had permission to
start construction 3 years ago. They could not even hold the ground-breaking
ceremony, because protesters blocked the access road. Every time the TMT
construction crews tried to drive up the mountain, protesters would stand in
the road, and block the vehicles. A couple of hours later police would show
up. They would stand around for 3ish more hours, and then arrest perhaps 5% of
the people blocking the road. By the time that was done, it was too late for
the construction crews to get to the summit and do any work, so everyone drove
back down. The few people who were arrested were immediately released once
they arrived in Hilo, so they'd be ready to do it all again the next day if
the crews tried to return to the mountain. No significant fines were ever
levied on the arrested protesters.

The only way the TMT construction will be able to proceed is if local law
enforcement is willing to arrest dozens of protesters (including "aunties" \-
photogenic elderly Hawaiian women) every week day, and not release them
immediately. There is absolutely no reason to believe that will happen.

Even if the local law enforcement officials are willing to perform mass
arrests, there are lots of other pressure points that the protesters could
attack. I would not be surprised to see the protesters shut down the
University of Hawaii, which hosts the Institute for Astronomy that runs
Maunakea Observatory, because that university has a very active Hawaiian
Studies program.

I worked for an observatory on Maunakea when the the first set of TMT
construction protests took place. The protesters were allowed to build an
unpermitted shelter building, to make blocking the road more convenient for
them. If they spend half a day piling rocks in the road, they can declare that
it is a sacred shrine, and the road maintenance crews cannot simply remove it.
Meanwhile, our observatory had to go through a formal review process with an
outside board if we wanted to move a small weather station from one side of
our building's roof to another side.

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bobiverse
This is great to hear! Mauna Kea is a far better location for the kind of
science TMT will be doing [1], especially when it has to compete with the
European Extremely Large Telescope in the southern hemisphere.

[1]: [http://casca.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/CATAC-Report-
Fina...](http://casca.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/CATAC-Report-Final.pdf)

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gammateam
This is actually a fun case to read, I was mainly looking for what the
dissenting opinion was, since it was 4-1.

I think at least one of the points can be appealed in the federal courts, if
the US Supreme Court would be down to hear it - so there would be several
gambles.

> In any event, as held by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Navajo Nation
> v. U.S. Forest Serv. , 535 F.3d 1058, 1077 (9th Cir. 2008) RLUIPA “applies
> only to government land-use regulations of private land such as zoning laws
> not to the government’s management of its own land. Therefore, this point of
> error is without merit.

Not that the government would ever cede control over its own land, I just feel
like the current Supreme Court would be more lenient to religious arguments.

All the rest of this particular case ignores the religious arguments and
focuses on the procedural stuff, which was all done by the book and expected
of a state and federal permitting agency, at least compared to arbitrary
claims by religious folks.

Now on to the dissenting opinion:

I gather no real rebuttal, just a partial affirmation to "points I-III" and no
comment on the other points. hm.

Applauds from me.

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VikingCoder
I'm sad that some native people are upset.

I wish it was easier to build things like this off of the Earth, in space or
on the Moon or Mars, etc.

~~~
8bitsrule
In recent decades, many large and important observatories have been
constructed in the desert of northern Chile ... pretty much uncontested.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Astronomical_observat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Astronomical_observatories_in_Chile)

~~~
PopePompous
There is something to be said for having at least one 30 meter class telescope
in the Northern hemisphere. There are parts of the sky which are never visible
from Chile.

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NotAmazin
>Thirty Meter astronomers had said if they didn’t get a green light to build
on Mauna Kea, they would build it on La Palma in the Canary Islands, off
Africa.

Good for them

~~~
pastor_elm
Mauna Kea is 6000 ft higher though.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
Altitude is not everything, and higher altitude does not automatically
translate into better performance of the instrument. There are many, many
factors that matter, including light pollution, transparency, cloud cover, air
turbulence, jet streams, etc.

~~~
bobiverse
A report by the Canadian Astronomical Society (Canada has a ~15% stake) found
that with taking all these variables into play, Mauna Kea is still the best
site for TMT. See page 35 for the final recomendations: [http://casca.ca/wp-
content/uploads/2017/03/CATAC-Report-Fina...](http://casca.ca/wp-
content/uploads/2017/03/CATAC-Report-Final.pdf)

~~~
Florin_Andrei
Of course. I was not saying Mauna Kea is not a good location. I was just
saying there is a whole bunch of factors that matter besides altitude.

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creaghpatr
Feel good compromise: Eminent Domain a spot of Zuckerberg's 750-acre property.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/23/mark-
zuck...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/23/mark-zuckerberg-
hawaii-land-lawsuits-kauai-estate)

------
emiliobumachar
Off-topic: the publication is named "staradvertiser". (The adds do seem
unusually well-targeted to me.) It's the first time I see a publication whose
name is clearly trying to appeal to advertisers rather than viewers. Has
anyone else seen any others? Any insights about their counter-intuitive
decision?

~~~
jhall1468
Advertiser was a common name for newspapers at the time. It's an old
publication (although I'm pretty sure it was called SomethingElse Advertiser).
I'd guess it's using the older definition of advertiser "call attention to".
The fact that the ads were well targeted was coincidence.

