Leina-a-ka’uahane. The leaping place for ghosts. Every island has such a place where, legend holds, spirits leave this world to enter one or another of the realms beyond. On Kaua’i, the ghosts leaped from the scarps above the Mana Plain, on the island’s westernmost point.
From a leaping place for ghosts, Mana has become a landing strip for planes and, since the late 1950s, a launching pad for rockets. For decades, the rockets were relatively small and were launched by rail systems. That changed dramatically late last month, when the U.S. Army fired the first in what it hopes to be a series of large, vertically fired missiles.
The missiles are part of the Strategic Defense Initiative, the program announced by President Reagan ten years ago with an impenetrable, orbiting shield against incoming nuclear warheads. While SDI plans call for several types of missiles to be fired from the Kaua’i Test Facility at Mana, public attention has been focused on the specific type fired February 26: the so-called STARS missile (short for Strategic Target System).
Aging Rockets
In its earliest stages, the STARS program bore the clumsier acronym IRBS, which stood for intermediate-range booster system. To develop various SDI-related weapons, the Army needed to find ways to test them. What was sought were missiles that could simulate the flights of intercontinental ballistic missiles while at the same time would avoid infringing on several international arms-control treaties.
In 1984, the Army came up with the idea of using the mothballed fleet of Polaris A3 rockets for this purpose. The Polaris, manufactured in the 1960s, were available, were not in demand, and, if they still worked, could carry into space the kinds of payloads needed to test SDI weapons. The trick was making sure the Polaris still worked.
The Army contracted with Sandia National Laboratories, based in New Mexico,1 to flesh out the IRBS program. Sandia recommended the first and second stages of the Polaris. Sandia itself would design and build the third stage, called ORBUS, and would assume responsibility for integrating the components into a functioning missile system. In 1985, the Army invited several independent laboratories to participate in a preliminary design review of Sandia’s work on the IRBS guidance and control system.
Few of the reviewers were enthusiastic. Time and again, Sandia was taken to task for the vagueness of its design and for an overabundance of confidence in the ability of the Polaris A3 boosters to work properly.
E.G. Gorman of the Aerospace Corporation reviewed the data Sandia had prepared on the propulsion systems. “It is my opinion that major problems may be encountered in attempting to use the surplus Polaris A3 flight hardware without additional aging and surveillance testing.” Gorman was concerned that aging had led to chemical and physical changes in the Stage 1 and Stage 2 rocket motor that rendered them unfit for service.
Searching for a Mission
The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory also was invited to participate in the review. Lawrence Schnee wrote up his firm’s critical comments: “We were left with the impression that the program requirements were not well defined and that the level of documentation and testing expected from Sandia was orders of magnitude less than that which we have experienced. In fact, it is significantly less than we have developed for ourselves on a similar program.”
Schnee elaborated on the drawbacks of Sandia’s casual approach: “This type of informal interfacing raises the level of schedule and technical risk significantly above the risk levels that [the Air Force and the Navy] have been willing to accept… There may be good reasons for running a program this way; lower over-all cost and a faster schedule, but you must be aware of the risks involved which include higher risk of flight failure, likely delays in the estimated schedule, increased cost of budget, and limited utility; when the program’s informal – specifications don’t meet user requirements.”
Sweating Nitro
There was little argument that the Polaris motors had problems. Nitroplasticizer, used as bonding, the solid rocket fuel, was migrating into the layer of insulation separating the fiberglass casing from the fuel. Sandia proposed fixing this with what it called “belly band” – a two foot-wide strip of fiberglass and insulation wound around the lower part of the booster.
In the second stage motor, potting in the dome area had leaked out over the years, making it more likely that the dome would burn through. This Sandia proposed to fix by replacing the potting material and its container.
Deteriorating potting material led to another problem: Nitroglycerin sweating through the plastic potting material to the exterior casing. As late as 1990, the contractor for the Air Force was sending two people to Hawthorne Army Ammunition Depot in Nevada (where some of the Polaris were stored) for three days every three months to wipe the nitroglycerin from the sweating motors. When the potting was replaced, the sweating stopped, the contractor said.
Over the objections of most independent reviewers, Sandia and the Army proceeded to develop the Strategic Target System, or STARS. The first launch was planned for spring of 1991.
Moving to Hawai’i
With few exceptions, activities confined to the Pacific Missile Range Facility or the Kaua’i Test Facility (which lies within the PMRF) need no prior approval from the state. STARS rockets are larger than anything launched before, however, and, for purposes of safety; the Army must make sure all “non-essential” people are cleared from an area up to 10,000 feet from the site. Since this so-called ground hazard area extends far outside the PMRF boundaries and well into state land, state permission was required.
In August 1989, the Navy approached the state Department of Natural Resources, requesting use of the state lands for this purpose. On April 29, 1990, the Board of land and Natural Resources approved entering into a memorandum of agreement with the several federal agencies involved, subject to several conditions (including the requirement that a Conservation District Use Application be filed and approved). Within three months, the federal government had released its environmental assessment for the STARS project, which concluded that there would be no significant environmental impact from the launchings.
On behalf of the Sierra Club and 1000 Friends of Kaua’i, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund sued the Army in federal court, alleging that the environmental assessment was insufficient and asking the court to require preparation of a full environmental impact statement. The SCLDF lawsuit noted the unique ecological resources of the Nohili dune area, which is home to several endangered species of plants and at least one globally imperiled plant community; the Chamaesyce celastroides, known to exist only at Polihale State Park.
Several weeks later, the state itself sued, claiming that the environmental assessment inadequately addressed concerns relating to the Conservation District, historic preservation, and air quality; (The dunes at Nohili were used by Hawaiians for burials.)
Launching the Legal Battles
The outcome of the federal lawsuit was the requirement that the Army go back to the drawing board on matters relating to air quality; it was ordered to prepare a supplemental environmental assessment to address these issues. The state had separately worked out an agreement with the Army addressing its concerns over historic sites in the area.
The Sierra Club legal Defense Fund appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit. Action on that appeal was halted in its tracks, however, when Senator Daniel Inouye, chairman of the Senate Defense Appropriations subcommittee, attached to a defense appropriations bill language requiring preparation of a full EIS for the STARS project. Following that, the lower court order was vacated.
Last February; the Army released its draft environmental impact statement. The Final EIS, substantially revised, appeared in April. By July, it appeared as though the Department of land and Natural Resources was on the verge of entering into a Memorandum of Agreement with the Army, allowing the Army to use state lands as a ground hazard area. Affected were about half of Polihale State Park, to the north of the test facility; and lands to the east owned by the state and under lease to Kekaha Sugar Company.
Once more, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund went to court, seeking to force the state government to comply with terms of the Hawai’i Environmental Protection Act (Chapter 343 of Hawai’i Revised Statutes). Chapter 343 requires preparation of an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement before any state land can be disposed of.
Federal Intervention
No sooner was the lawsuit filed than the state attempted to remove the case to federal court, arguing that the real defendant should be the federal government rather than the state. On July 31, 1992, U.S. District Judge Harold Fong threw out that effort, taking the state to task for what he termed “barely recognizable complaint” in which the federal government appeared all too willing to take on the role of defendant. The issue turned on state law, Fong said, and should properly be tried in state court.
On August 3, SCLDF won a temporary restraining order, barring the state from signing any memorandum with the federal government that would allow the launches to proceed. Suddenly the DLNR had a change of heart. By mid-August, notice of availability of the draft EA was published in the OEQC Bulletin.
To no one’s surprise, the draft EA did little more than invoke the federal EIS. Although it adopted the EIS and the 11-volume Administrative Record by reference, and both these items were described as being available for review in the OEQC notice, months later, the state was still scrambling to try to produce documents from the record when members of the public requested them. (For example, Mark Smaalders, a natural resources analyst with SCLDF was not notified until late October that “most” of the items that were missing from the administrative record earlier were available for review. The DLNR did not satisfy all the requests for documents until December 17, long after the comment period for the draft EA had closed and, indeed, after the negative declaration had been issued.)
Count Down
On December 2, 1992, the Office of Environmental Quality Control was notified by the DLNR that it was issuing a notice of determination and a “negative declaration” – the state equivalent of a finding of no significant impact. The five-page notice is nearly as long as the six-page EA itself and, in some regards, may be more informative. In it, the DLNR claims that “while the MOA in its original form may not have been a use of state land such as to trigger the requirements for Chapter 343… it is the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ opinion that at this point it would constitute such a use,” with the MOA having evolved “so that some elements of a real estate license are now in current recent drafts.”
The state was still enjoined from signing the MOA by the August court order, which had been extended by stipulation. Now with the minimal requirements of Chapter 343 having been satisfied, the state was ready to sign as soon as the preliminary injunction expired, on January 23. On January 25, Circuit Judge Thomas K. Kaulukukui Jr. lifted the injunction. On February 17, he denied SCLDF’s request for a supplementary injunction pending appeal to the state Supreme Court.
Lift Off
Unbeknownst to the public, by the time the appeal was filed, the state had already executed the agreement with the Army and Navy. In fact, signing it was one of the last official actions of BLNR Chairman William Paty. On February 9, when an officer of Kekaha Sugar Company added his signature to the agreement, the last legal obstacle to a STARS launch was removed.
In the agreement, no authority is given to military personnel to evict people from the ground hazard area. The state has apparently agreed to do this for the Army using officers of the DLNR’s Division of Conservation and Resource Enforcement, assisted – in February, at least – by K-9 Corps.
1 Sandia also operates the Kaua`i Test Facility, from which launches in support of the SDI program are to occur over the next 10 years. At KTF, Sandia is a contractor to the Department of Energy.
Volume 3, Number 9 March 1993
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