The Thirty Meter Telescope project’s construction permit has been rescinded by the Supreme Court of Hawaii on the basis that the Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources made a mistake in issuing the project’s building permit “before the request for a contested case hearing was resolved and the hearing was held.”
In order to have the permit reissued, the Board is required to conduct a contested hearing.
In regards to the decision passed down on Wednesday in which the court noted the Board’s failure to follow due process, the spokeswoman for the group that raised the legal challenge, Kealoha Pisciotta with the Mauna Kea Hui group, said that “if the process has no integrity, neither will the outcome,” the New York Times reported.
If the process has no integrity, neither will the outcome
The University of Hawaii, which was in possession of the permit, leased the land to the controversial telescope project.
Officials from the university were quoted by the NY Times as having said that the university “continues to believe that Mauna Kea is a precious resource where science and culture can synergistically coexist.”
The proposed 18-story high telescope is intended to be constructed atop the state’s highest point, Mt. Mauna Kea, but as Discovery News noted in a recent report, Mauna Kea is a sacred location under the religious beliefs of the indigenous Hawaiians, the Native Hawaiians.
As the highest and second largest of its kind, the telescope has raised concerns amongst environmental activists who are particularly concerned with the potential ecological impacts imposed by the proposed structure.
In other news, NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes recently revealed the faintest galaxy ever spotted.
