As telescope lease agreements on Mauna Kea near their expiration dates, the process for renewing them remains up in the air.
Doug Simons, Director of the University of Hawai‘i's Institute for Astronomy, advised the state Mauna Kea Stewardship and Oversight Authority last Thursday that the window for observatories on the mountain to negotiate their leases of state land is rapidly closing.
All observatories on Mauna Kea are legally bound to decommission their facilities and fully restore their sites to natural conditions by the end of 2033 if they are not able to negotiate further land use with the state. Because of this, Simons said that the telescopes could be very close to the end of their operational lives: decommissioning would likely need to begin by 2028 in order to be completed by the deadline.
In 2020, Simons said he predicted that those observatories that intend to remain operational beyond 2033 must negotiate their leases with the state by the first half of the 2020s — “which is right now, more or less.”
Despite this, those negotiations have not yet been completed, Simons said. Between the protests against the Thirty Meter Telescope in 2015 and 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the MKSOA taking over management of the mountain from UH in 2028, the process has been paused and restarted multiple times over the years.
But without an understanding of how many telescopes will continue to operate beyond 2033, it is difficult for any observatory to estimate the cost of operating on Mauna Kea. Simons said all observatories in the Mauna Kea Science Reserve contribute millions of dollars each year to various shared infrastructure costs, so each telescope that doesn’t have a lease renewed will increase costs for the rest.
“So that really gets you back to the basic question … how much is it going to cost?” Simons said. “And if we don’t know the answer to how much a lease is going to cost, the process is basically stalled.”
Even if the MKSOA can get through the negotiation process quickly, Simons said any new leases will almost certainly be challenged in contested cases and litigation, which will eat up even more time.
Further complicating affairs is the myriad of international funding agencies involved in the various observatories, all of which would need to agree to lease terms, which Simons said is a particularly complex and time-consuming part of the process.
And, of course, all of this is taking place as major cuts are planned for American science funding, with President Donald Trump’s administration proposing in June enormous slashes to NASA and National Science Foundation budgets.
MKSOA board members remained optimistic that they can expedite the lease negotiating process relatively quickly: “It’s not like we’re sitting at the table yet, but the more we prepare ourselves to be at that table, the quicker it will go,” said member Neil Hannahs.
But the MKSOA and its executive director John De Fries already have a lot on their plate as they race toward 2028, when the Authority will assume full control of the mountain from UH. A new management plan for the mountain is being developed, and is not expected to be completed until mid-2026.
At the same time, MKSOA is developing its strategic framework — a short, three-page document outlining the Authority’s guiding principles regarding Mauna Kea that would impact any proposed lease terms. Public meetings will be held around Hawai‘i Island through September to solicit feedback on the draft document.
