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More than 20 people from Hawaii to Tahiti urged the Maui County Council on Monday to oppose the military’s plan to build more telescopes atop Haleakala, the Valley Isle’s highest peak at 10,000 feet.

The U.S. Space Force was on island to give an update on its plans to mount up to seven telescopes on Haleakala as well as clean up a 700-gallon diesel spill on the mountain that happened in January 2023.

Lt. Col. Phillip Wagenbach, commander of the 15th Space Surveillance Squadron, told the council’s Efficiency Solutions and Circular Systems Committee that his agency is finishing phase two of the cleanup and is close to embarking on the final stage which will involve a complete remediation of the site. Phase two has involved collecting soil samples, analyzing the results and coming up with remediation alternatives.

Wagenbach and the committee heard from cultural practitioners who oppose putting any more telescopes on a mountain that many Native Hawaiians consider sacred.   

Members of the Tahitian cultural and environmental preservation group performed a song and addressed the cultural ties they share with Native Hawaiians, how they are visiting the state for in Honolulu and how they share the concerns about the telescope project.

Several said the military has created a painful legacy in Hawaii. They cited Kahoolawe, a now-unpopulated island off Maui used as a bombing range and training ground for decades, and more recently Red Hill on Oahu where a 2021 fuel spill at a World War II-era depot released nearly 20,000 gallons of fuel, making its way into the drinking water system serving 93,000 people around Pearl Harbor.

For some, any additional military presence in the state is unwelcome.

“You have no jurisdiction on the mauna, on Maui and in Hawaii in general,” said Kanoe Pacheo, adding that she supports a resolution that council member Keani Rawlins-Fernandez will ask the full council to support Wednesday.

The resolution would put on record the council’s opposition to the telescope project, called AMOS STAR, or Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Site Small Telescope Advanced Research facility.

Space Force, created in 2019 and housed under the umbrella of the U.S. Air Force, held three scoping meetings on Maui in May as part of its compliance with national and state environmental laws. Most of the people who turned out to those meetings voiced opposition to adding more telescopes on Haleakaka, which already hosts six academic and four space surveillance telescopes.

Space Force’s contractor, , is preparing a draft environmental impact statement on the proposed telescope project that it expects to release in early 2025. Public comment is accepted until Friday.

Rawlins-Fernandez asked Wagenbach how much weight the cultural considerations will be given in the military’s decision-making.

There isn’t a formula but given the amount of public comments and testimony that have been provided, “it requires a very serious look,” Wagenbach said.

Council member Tamara Paltin asked Wagenbach about the lease the Air Force has on Haleakala and how much it pays for use of the land annually.

“One dollar,” Wagenbach replied.

She also asked about how much the Air Force has paid in fines for having spilled hundreds of gallons of fuel on Haleakala.

“None,” he said.

Maui resident Joyclynn Costa said someone higher up in the military’s chain of command should come to hear what the community has to say — someone in a position to make a decision about the future of the telescopes, which Space Force says it needs to monitor satellites and other space-based assets, both friendly and potentially hostile.

Rawlins-Fernandez described the issue as challenging and sensitive, and thanked Wagenbach for engaging with the committee and the public.

“This is what accountability in my mind looks like,” he said. “We are here for comments and questions … For me personally, it’s not because we have to, it’s because we should be doing this.”

Also on Monday, the University of Hawaii Hilo announced that the first telescope decommissioning process on Mauna Kea is now complete. Built by the Air Force in 1968, Hoku Kea Observatory was located on the southeastern flank of the Big Island volcano’s summit. Two years later the military gave it to the university.

The decommissioning process wrapped up last month, according to a university press release.

A second telescope on Mauna Kea, the , is also in the process of being decommissioned and should be completely removed later this year.

Dozens of protestors, many of them Native Hawaiian elders, were arrested at Mauna Kea four years ago as they demonstrated against the Thirty Meter Telescope.

Most of them had their charges dropped following a 2021 Hawaii Supreme Court decision that found authorities had not followed proper procedures.

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.