Governor David Ige of Hawaii announced on Thursday that a “notice to proceed” had been issued for construction of a giant, long-contested telescope on Mauna Kea, the volcano on the Big Island that 13 major telescopes already call home. Construction could start as soon as July.
“We are all stewards of Mauna Kea,” Gov. Ige said. He pledged to respect the rights and cultural traditions of the Hawaiian people, including the freedom to speak out against the telescope.
The Thirty Meter Telescope would be the largest in the Northern Hemisphere. Hawaiian activists have long opposed it, contending that decades of telescope-building on Mauna Kea have polluted the mountain. In 2015, protesters disrupted a ground-breaking ceremony and blocked work vehicles from accessing the mountain.
On Wednesday night, state authorities tore down a group of shacks and monuments that had been constructed on Mauna Kea in protest. They included a pair of shacks called “hales,” one located across from a visitor center halfway up the mountain, where protests had been staged, and another at the base of the mountain that activists were using as a checkpoint.
Mauna Kea is considered “ceded land” belonging to the Hawaiian Kingdom, and some Hawaiians have argued that the spate of telescope construction atop the mountain has interfered with cultural and religious practices.
The Thirty Meter Telescope would be built by an international collaboration called the TMT International Observatory. The project, which involves the University of California and the California Institute of Technology as well as Japan, China, India and Canada, is expected to cost $2 billion.
In December of 2015, the state’s Supreme Court invalidated a previous construction permit, on the grounds that the opponents had been deprived of due process because a state board had granted the permit before the opponents could be heard in a contested case hearing.
At the time, astronomers with the telescope project said they would build it in the Canary Islands if denied in Hawaii.