HILO — TMT International Observatory plans to resume building its giant telescope in April 2018, a board member said.
It’s just a question of where.
The TIO board announced this week that it selected Spain’s Canary Islands as a backup site to Mauna Kea if it doesn’t regain a construction permit through a second contested case.
But the organization also is facing a self-imposed deadline that appears to leave little room for error.
“We need to start construction in April 2018,” said Fiona Harrison, chairwoman of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy at Caltech and a TIO board member.
“That’s the hard deadline,” she said.
The pace of the latest contested case, a quasi-judicial process that allows people impacted by the project to argue before a hearings officer, could make that difficult.
As of Wednesday, only four of the 85 witnesses in the contested case, which started Oct. 20, have been called.
Each of the nearly two dozen remaining parties get to cross-examine witnesses, though not all participate each day.
Hearings officer Riki May Amano started limiting cross-examination to 30 minutes this week to help keep the process moving and added 14 more dates, that stretch into late December.
A decision from Amano, subject to approval or rejection by the state Board of Land and Natural Resources, could then take months or longer.
Supporters of building the next-generation telescope in Hawaii don’t appear to be panicking yet.
“I think everybody is a bit concerned about the timeline for all the witness testimony,” said Doug Simons, director of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope atop Mauna Kea.
But he added it’s in everyone’s interest that the hearing is fair.
“There’s no way to make it go super fast,” Simons said.
“You have to have the integrity of the process preserved.”
TMT supporters learned that the hard way in December when the state Supreme Court remanded the project’s land use permit. The high court ruled the Land Board violated due process rights of project opponents by voting for the permit before the first contested case occurred in 2011.
Kealoha Pisciotta, a participant in both contested case hearings, said the process shouldn’t be rushed.
“I want it to go the pace that is required for justice to happen,” she said.
The project is opposed by some Native Hawaiians who see construction of the 180-foot-tall telescope as desecration of sacred land.
Groundbreaking occurred in October 2014, but was disrupted by protesters.
The first contested case involved about a half-dozen parties and lasted seven days over two months. A written decision took more than a year later to reach.
If the Land Board approves the project again, supporters expect it still to land in court.
Harrison said the TIO board wants any appeals to be resolved by the construction date, though it might not pull the plug if there’s no court-imposed injunction at that time. A new law enacted by the state Legislature would allow such an appeal to go straight to the state Supreme Court.
She said the deadline is driven by costs and the need to be competitive with other large telescopes planned for Chile.
“Mauna Kea continues to be the preferred choice,” Harrison said.
“It is the best place to study the stars in the Northern Hemisphere. There’s no doubt about that.
“But we do need a reasonable Plan B if the Hawaii option isn’t feasible.”
In the meantime, she said TIO will seek all the necessary approvals from the Spanish government to build on the Canary Islands in case Hawaii doesn’t work out.
But it also will continue to provide educational grants for Hawaii Island students and pay for its sublease on Mauna Kea, currently at $300,000, Harrison said.
If construction resumes in 2018, the telescope would reach first light in mid-2029, she said.
Before delays, the telescope was estimated to cost $1.4 billion. An updated cost figure hasn’t been released publicly.
TIO’s partners are Caltech, University of California, Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy and national institutes in Japan, China and India.
Email Tom Callis at tcallis@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
