Protesters holding a premature anti-TMT celebration
Protesters holding a premature anti-TMT celebration
The Thirty Meter Telsecope protesters are celebrating over the Hawaii Supreme Court ruling to invalidate the Conservation District Use Permit (CDUP) granted to the TMT group by the state. The court has sent the case back to the Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) to repeat a contested case hearing. Protesters are demanding the removal of all the equipment on the site leased to TMT by the University of Hawaii claiming falsely that it is a burial site. They may be a little premature in their celebration.
While the TMT construction is on hold, the TMT people have every right to use the site for testing and to prevent trespassing by protesters. This is the first time in the eight years of appeals that a court has supported the protesters and the ruling was not based on substance but on procedure, which can and will be corrected.
The BLNR issued the CDUP prior to the holding of a contested case hearing, which was required by an earlier legal ruling. The hearing was held after the permit was issued and found no basis for the protesters’ appeal. To repeat this process could take many months. There is no reason to believe that a second hearing on the same issues will provide a different answer. This only delays and increases the cost of a major scientific project that is good for science and the economy and is supported by a large majority of the people in Hawaii.
Hopefully, the BLNR will be able to set up a new hearing that will be more effective and take less time than the previous hearing where the hearing officer took 14 months to make his report.
That report stated:
“The reliable, substantial and credible evidence demonstrates that the TMT Project will not result in any substantial adverse impact on the cultural practices of the community or state or Native Hawaiian traditional and customary practices on Mauna Kea.”
Unfortunately, the state Supreme Court chose to focus on procedure rather than substance and have made the development of this major scientific instrument more difficult and more expensive.
Ultimately, this project will be completed and make major contributions to our economy and knowledge of the universe. The protesters will fade into history as being unable to live in our future of science and culture together.
Jerry Smith
North Kohala
Why doesn’t CDC set up a lab on the Big Island?
I now feel so much safer that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has congratulated itself on doing such a great job in dealing with the dengue fever epidemic.
So, someone tell me, just how difficult would it be for them to set up labs on this island to test the blood of suspected individuals who might have dengue fever? It seems that right now, the lab results have to be sent over to Oahu which takes another four days. Within that four day period, the individual is probably unknowingly exposing the disease to family, friends, neighbors, communities and possibly even the neighbor islands.
So, wouldn’t it be nice if everyone had earlier notification so they could take additional preventive measures? And wouldn’t it be nice if our government could help fund such a project to get it going?
Carl Merner
Holualoa