Protesters halt Hawaii telescope groundbreaking

HONOLULU — Protesters disrupted a planned groundbreaking and Hawaiian blessing ceremony Tuesday for the construction of one of the world’s largest telescopes near the summit of the Big Island’s Mauna Kea.

The groundbreaking for the $1.4 billion Thirty Meter Telescope was being shown via live webcast because of limited access to the construction site in an area at 14,000 feet elevation with arctic-like conditions.

It was more than an hour after the event was scheduled to begin when the webcast host, astronomer Robert Hurt, said the caravan of buses carrying attendees up the mountain “hit a snag” and would be delayed. He later said the delay was due to a group of people blocking access to the site.

The webcast later showed protesters yelling amid attempts to start the blessing. “We do hope we’ll be able to find a common ground and proceed with this in the future,” Hurt said before the webcast shutdown. It wasn’t clear when or if the event would proceed.

Some people oppose building the telescope in a place held sacred by Native Hawaiians. Kealoha Pisciotta said Monday her group, Mauna Kea Anaina Hou, planned to protest nonviolently by holding prayer ceremonies on the road at the bottom of the mountain. She said there were no plans to be disruptive or block people from attending the event. “We don’t want to bother the TMT people,” she said. “That’s why we want to do ceremony and ask for the healing — for both us and them, the TMT people.”

She and other members of her group couldn’t immediately be reached Tuesday.

The groundbreaking was to culminate years of permit applications and approvals from the University of Hawaii and the state land board. The university leases land from the state where the telescope will be built. The Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources approved the sublease in June and then later denied requests to contest the approval.