Mauna Kea Case Study

The companies that build telescopes on Mauna Kea are desecrating something that is very meaningful to Hawaiian culture. They are desecrating the sacred lands by digging up the soil, paving down concrete everywhere possible, they are basically disregarding anybody’s thoughts or feelings for this land. TMT or Thirty Meter Telescope is currently the biggest news that is happening in Hawaiian politics. This telescope is said to better improve the worlds understanding of space and would greatly progress the scientific community, yet it also is taking up 5 acres of land on Mauna Kea. On the TMT website it states that the company drafted for 5 acres of land for their construction yet they also state that they will only be using 1.44 acres for the

Mauna Kea is considered seceded lands preserved for the Hawaiian people but the law requires the state to develop management plans for the mountain, which is created by the DLNR and approved by the BLNR. The Board of Land and Natural Resources are the ones to approve any construction building on these lands. For companies to be allowed to build on top of Mauna Kea, legally, they must have a CDUP or Conservation District Use Permit and in order to get one of these permits, they must create an application for the BLNR. The application must include measurements of construction, before and after effects to the environment, etc. Now the job of the BLNR is to look into these applications to see if they are really necessary and if they will affect the land or environments natural resources hence Board of LAND and NATURAL RESOURCES; but they are just rubber stamping all applications that come to their desks because they want to develop the lands. This created the expansion of telescopes on Mauna Kea because for one the department viewing the applications would automatically approve, two it’s one the best spots on earth for astronomy, and three it only costs a $1 a year to have a building up