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The U.S. Air Force is working in conjunction with the U.S. Space Force and the Air Force Research Laboratory to mount up to seven telescopes in a state conservation district atop Haleakala.

The agency, which is taking public comment on the project until June 7, is in the process of developing a draft environmental impact statement as required by Hawaii law.

The telescopes would be used to track satellites and other objects in space over the Pacific, the agencies say. An optics lab would also be built.

The volcano’s summit at 10,000 feet already houses six academic and four space surveillance telescopes.

Last week, the Air Force held scoping meetings in Kahului, Pukalani and Kihei that drew hundreds of people, many of them Native Hawaiians who consider Haleakala sacred and oppose any further installation of telescopes. They made their voices loud and clear in many hours of testimony.

“The American military is like a sick old man who won’t take no for an answer,” said Sesame Shim.

Shim described the installation of telescopes on Haleakala as a violent desecration of a family member, an analogy several other women echoed in testimony, eliciting loud applause.

Dozens of people were arrested in 2019 on Hawaii island during a demonstration against the Thirty Meter Telescope project atop Mauna Kea, also considered sacred by many Hawaiians. Charges were dropped last year as Gov. Josh Green vowed to find a new way forward for that project and the community.

Dane Uluwehiokalani Maxwell, a cultural adviser on Haleakala, said it’s insulting that the military wants to erect more telescopes on the mauna when they have yet to completely clean up a fuel spill from last year and remediate the soil.

“Nothing has happened. They’re such a powerful organization. They could make the Earth move if they wanted to, but here we are with them proposing seven telescopes,” Maxwell said, speaking outside the Kihei Community Center prior to the start of Wednesday evening’s meeting.  

In January 2023, some 700 gallons of diesel fuel spilled at the Maui Space Surveillance Complex on Halealakala after a lightning strike damaged a back-up generator.

An initial cleanup to 4 feet below the ground of grossly contaminated soil was conducted shortly after the spill, according to the Hawaii Department of Health.

Since then, the Air Force has worked to characterize any remaining contaminants and determine their exact location, Jennah Oshire, DOH remedial project manager, said by email.

GSI, a Native Hawaiian-owned company, received a contract to identify contamination in the subsurface. A report the company produced said contamination is present to 20 feet below the surface “but poses very low threat to the drinking water,” according to a Space Force press release in January.  

The Air Force is working on a draft remediation plan to select the preferred method of cleaning up and restoring the site. Once that draft plan is finished, it will go out for public comment.

The Air Force expects remedial action to be designed and carried out by late summer, according to an email from the public affairs office.

“We continue to meet with concerned members of the community,” said Lt. Col. Phillip Wagenbach, 15th Space Surveillance Squadron commander, in the press release. “We are taking deliberate actions to safely restore the sacred grounds at Haleakala, while accounting for regulatory and cultural needs and our responsibility to project the land.”

Since the accident, the Air Force says it has rewritten its spill response plan to make it more effective. A new generator with improved containment methods was to be installed.

After giving a brief overview of the proposed telescope project on Wednesday night, Wagenbach and Scott Pierce, director of Maui High Performance Computing Center, mostly listened to the testifiers.

One testifier asked if the new telescopes on Haleakala would be used for any military purposes. The woman said she had seen mention of a short-range directed energy weapon called a Tactical High Power Operational Responder, on a website associated with the telescope project. THOR uses high-power microwave energy to disable enemy drones, according to the Air Force Research Laboratory.

“THOR is not planned for this site,” Wagenbach said. “These telescopes will not be used as weapons.”

With increased commercial space activity and human space travel, space is becoming increasingly littered with debris, including satellites. A big part of the telescopes’ job would be to identify and characterize human-made objects in space, determine if they are threatening and if they’re staying on their pre-determined flight path or not, said Emily Peacock, a Space Force spokesperson.

“We have seen an incredibly congested space domain,” she said.

Peacock said every comment the public submits, whether it’s online, at a public meeting or mailed in, will be carefully considered as the Air Force and its consultant on the environmental study, Tetra Tech, move forward with the proposed telescope project, referred to as .

“The comments here have significant weight on how many, if any, telescopes will be approved or constructed,” she said.

The draft EIS is expected to be issued in early 2025 with the final version anticipated in early 2026.

The project will need approvals from the National Park Service, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources and possibly others. Consultations with federally recognized Native Hawaiian organizations are expected and communities with environmental justice concerns will be identified, according to .

Haleakala is home to 11 endangered or threatened species including the Hawaiian hoary bat, band-rumped storm petrel, Hawaiian goose or nene and Haleakala silversword, a rare plant that only grows on the volcano’s summit.

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by grants from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.

Civil Beat’s coverage of environmental issues on Maui is supported by grants from the Center for Disaster Philanthropy and the Hawaii Wildfires Recovery Fund, the Knight Foundation and the Doris Duke Foundation.