{"id":9484,"date":"2017-02-03T21:31:37","date_gmt":"2017-02-03T21:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.environment-hawaii.org\/?p=9484"},"modified":"2019-04-10T02:05:20","modified_gmt":"2019-04-10T02:05:20","slug":"in-tmt-hearing-sierra-club-director-makes-several-dubious-assertions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/?p=9484","title":{"rendered":"In TMT Hearing, Sierra Club Director\u00a0Makes Several Dubious Assertions"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Screenshot<\/a>
Sierra Club, Hawai`i Chapter, executive director Marti Townsend testifying at the TMT contested case hearing as a KaHEA board member. Credit: NaLeoTV<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On January 10, Marti Townsend, executive director of the Hawai`i Chapter of the Sierra Club, took the witness stand in the contested case hearing on the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). She testified for the better part of five hours, with most of that time spent responding to softball questions lobbed her way by a dozen or so parties to the contested case who oppose the TMT.<\/p>\n

In the 2011 contested case hearing over the TMT, Townsend, who is an attorney, represented KaHEA: the Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance. This time around, she was testifying, she said, as a volunteer board member of KaHEA, with her written testimony appearing on KaHEA letterhead.<\/p>\n

Environment Hawai`i <\/i>asked Townsend for comment on each of the issues raised below. She did not provide any.<\/p>\n

Views<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

The first cross-examiner was Deborah Ward, who asked about the potential impacts of the TMT on views from several areas near the summit. Relying on a site visit made in 2011, when a red balloon was lofted from the proposed TMT site to the full height of the telescope, Townsend stated that the position of the balloon showed that it would impossible to look toward Haleakala from the Keck telescopes on the summit ridge without seeing the TMT.<\/p>\n

Townsend added: \u201cWe also engaged in another simulation, where we went up to Pu`u Poliahu \u2026 and there, too, the red balloon was still in the sky. And from there you could see that it would be impossible to get a view of, say, the rising sun without the TMT in the viewplane.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, the proposed TMT site is almost directly north of Pu`u Poliahu and could not possibly interfere with views of the sunrise from Pu`u Poliahu.<\/p>\n

Ward then asked if, from Poliahu, the TMT would also obstruct views of Pu`u Makanaka. Makanaka is a cinder cone where a number of pre-contact Hawaiian sites and burials have been located.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d Townsend replied.<\/p>\n

Makanaka, however, is about 3 \u00bd miles northeast of Poliahu and not visible from Poliahu even on a clear day, since the summit ridge, at 13,780 feet, rises between those two cinder cones.<\/p>\n

\"Puu<\/a>
Credit: TMT EIS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Building Size<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Throughout her testimony, at several points, Townsend stated the Thirty Meter Telescope would be \u201can 18-story, five-acre building,\u201d describing it as \u201ca structure bigger than anything on the island of Hawai`i.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the height of the dome would be around the same as an 18-story building, the telescope base would be around 215 feet in diameter, with a footprint of around 35,000 square feet, or about 0.85 acres. Even adding the support structure (21,000 square feet) and utility building (6,000 square feet), the total ground occupied by the telescope and ancillary structures comes to about an acre and a half.<\/p>\n

It is unclear whether it was Townsend or someone else who first described the TMT in this fashion. However, at least one witness who followed Townsend, Kehau Abad, used the identical description in her testimony.<\/p>\n

The Wekiu Bug<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\"Credit:<\/a>
Wekiu bug on Mauna Kea. Credit: Karl Magnacca<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the first TMT contested case hearing, the tiny wekiu bug, found only at the summit of Mauna Kea, was a candidate endangered species. Soon after that case ended, the wekiu bug was removed from the candidate species list.<\/p>\n

Yet when asked by Ward to discuss the widened jeep trail leading to the TMT site, Townsend said that the widening had destroyed wekiu bug habitat. \u201cIt\u2019s been decimated,\u201d she said. \u201cThat cinder has been compacted. And wekiu can\u2019t live in compacted cinder. \u2026  They are endangered, and they are a beautiful symbol of the kind of unique and amazing natural environment in Hawai`i. \u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you say endangered, you mean rare and threatened?\u201d Ward asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight,\u201d Townsend replied, \u201cbut their habitat is being lost and they are at risk of being listed as an endangered species.\u201d<\/p>\n

The university\u2019s Comprehensive Management Plan for Mauna Kea states this: \u201cten years of study following the 1997-98 surveys suggest that wekiu bugs are still abundant on Mauna Kea, and that they are able to reside in both undeveloped and developed areas at the summit.\u201d They are not federally listed either as threatened or endangered.<\/p>\n

Comprehensive Management Plan<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

In 2006, Judge Glenn Hara determined that there could be no new telescopes until the University of Hawai`i had completed a comprehensive management plan (CMP). Townsend criticized the resulting plan for dealing only with university-managed lands, \u201cwhen it should be all [Department of Land and Natural Resource\u2019s] property, all of the property under the DLNR\u2019s responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJudge Hara\u2019s ruling concluded that in order to truly manage a Conservation District, the management plan must cover multiple land uses and must take into consideration the entire Conservation District,\u201d Townsend said, \u201cand there was some discussion about how the Conservation District of Mauna Kea is more than just the astronomy precinct and it\u2019s more than just the summit. It could be all the way down to the Saddle Road so it could include all the palila habitat at the lower levels.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hara\u2019s order actually stated that the CMP was to address \u201cmultiple land uses within the larger overall area that the [University of Hawai`i Institute for Astronomy] controls at the top of Mauna Kea in the Conservation District.\u201d<\/p>\n

Telescope Permits<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

In response to a question from Clarence Ching, Townsend stated as a fact that many of the telescopes were built without permits.<\/p>\n

Ching: \u201cDo you know, historical-wise, whether all of the observatories on the mountain were constructed in compliance with Conservation District Use Permits?\u201d<\/p>\n

Townsend: \u201cOh, they weren\u2019t. Many of them were retroactively permitted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ching: \u201cReally? So how did that happen?\u201d<\/p>\n

Townsend: \u201cI\u2019m not exactly sure how that happened. It\u2019s shocking to me. But through the early \u201980s to mid-\u201990s several telescopes were built without Conservation District Use Permits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Petitioner Harry Fergerstrom picked up on that point. \u201cSo, they got away with it 13 times already,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

To which Townsend replied, \u201cSeveral telescopes were built without permits at all, at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam Lemmo, administrator of the Department of Land and Natural Resources\u2019 Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands, speculated that Townsend may have been referring to the Submillimeter Array (SMA), which consists of eight six-meter dishes that are arrayed at any given time in configurations that can mimic the collecting ability of a single dish up to half a kilometer in diameter. Thirteen pads were built to accommodate the SMA dishes. The SMA, Lemmo said, \u201cis considered one telescope observatory,\u201d but opponents have argued that it should be considered 13.<\/p>\n

Noise<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Fergerstrom also picked up on a statement Townsend had made about noise generated by telescopes at the summit. \u201cYou said the noise was \u2018particularly intrusive,\u2019\u201d Fergerstrom said, then asking her to elaborate.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs it is now,\u201d Townsend replied, \u201cit\u2019s hard to find a quiet spot on the summit area of Mauna Kea. During the day, to keep the telescopes cool, air conditioning compressors \u2013 engines, are going all the time. They\u2019ll shut off, and they\u2019ll turn on. And they\u2019re going at different times. It\u2019s a loud rumble, an engine sound. Almost like a plane. And the TMT, which would be significantly larger than the existing telescopes, would require similar air conditioning. And so the noise that will be created, if the TMT were constructed, would just be immense and would make it even harder to find a quiet spot on the mountain.\u201d<\/p>\n

The environmental impact statement for the abandoned Keck outrigger telescope proposal, published in 2006 and referred to often and approvingly by TMT opponents, describes background noise levels both at the summit and the Hale Pohaku facilities, at the 9,000-foot level, as consisting \u201cprimarily of sounds associated with the wind and vehicular noise. The summit of Mauna Kea normally has a low ambient noise level. Existing facility operations generate extremely low noise levels.\u201d<\/p>\n

Glaciers and a Sinking Summit<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Under questioning from Lanny Sinkin, Townsend stated that the development of the TMT would continue the \u201curban sprawl\u201d of telescopes on the Mauna Kea summit, resulting in an \u201cindustrial park up there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you can see that on Mauna Kea already. \u2026 You had one telescope in 1968 and that telescope spawned another one \u2026 so you had sprawl on the summit and as a result the summit is now 38 feet shorter than it was before the university leased it. And that\u2019s just unreal.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result, Townsend continued, \u201ccultural practitioners have now identified Pu`u Wekiu as the relocated summit because the original summit is so much shorter now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pu`u Wekiu has been recognized as the summit of Mauna Kea since at least 1955, when a U.S. Geological Survey benchmark was placed on the summit, identifying it as having an elevation of 13,796 feet above mean sea level.<\/p>\n

Townsend also apparently believes that glaciers are still to be found on the mountain.<\/p>\n

Cindy Freitas asked Townsend if she had knowledge of the glaciers on Mauna Kea. \u201cI know that they exist, that\u2019s about it,\u201d Townsend replied.<\/p>\n

Glaciers last existed on Mauna Kea around 10,000 years ago.<\/p>\n

— Patricia Tummons<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On January 10, Marti Townsend, executive director of the Hawai`i Chapter of the Sierra Club, took the witness stand in the contested case hearing on the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). She testified for the better part of five hours, with … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[351],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-9484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eh-xtra","tag-patricia-tummons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}