Is Hawaii in danger of losing the Thirty Meter Telescope?

Ed Stone, the TMT’s executive director, said Friday that while the planned $1.4 billion next-generation telescope is committed to Hawaii for now, a final decision about how to proceed depends on what state officials have to say.

“We obviously are doing what we need to do to go forward,” he said. “The question is: Can we move forward in Hawaii?”

Chile is the likely backup plan for TMT. Cerro Armazones, the mountain in Chile’s Atacama Desert, was announced as the TMT’s runner-up location in 2009 following a worldwide search and evaluations of the top two finalist sites.

Stone said TMT officials studied the 10,000-foot summit of Cerro Armazones thoroughly, as it did with 13,796-foot Mauna Kea.

“Whether (Chile) remains an option, we don’t know because we have not actually made a decision to pursue another site,” he said.

But if it came down to a second option, he added: “We have all the information we need.”

Meanwhile, Stone, a physics professor at the California Institute of Technology, said the TMT International Observatory board of directors remains frustrated that it has not been given any direction from the state more than seven weeks after the Hawaii Supreme Court invalidated the project’s construction permit.

“We were frustrated to have lost the permit after having spent eight years doing what we were asked to do,” he said. “And, of course, it’s frustrating now that we haven’t been told what it is that we need to do again to get a permit.”

Stone, who joined a Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii panel discussion in Honolulu Friday, said the board continues to wait for the state to outline a new permitting process and projected timetable.

“We need the information and we haven’t gotten it,” he said. “Clearly, the (TMT) partnership is concerned about the spaces that we are currently in without a permit and a plan — or any indication of what the plan will look like.”

The court in December ruled that the state Board of Land and Natural Resources erred in approving the project’s conservation district use permit before holding a contested case hearing. The court revoked the permit and sent it back to the board for a new contested case hearing, with a stop first at circuit court.

But the case, which was remanded by the high court at the earliest date permitted by law, now sits in the possession of Circuit Judge Greg K. Nakamura. The judge has held onto the case for more than three weeks.

Tammy Mori, Hawaii state Judiciary spokeswoman, said Friday afternoon that Nakamura is in the process of scheduling a status conference with the parties to discuss the order and next steps.

Earlier Friday, state Attorney General Doug Chin issued a statement that said, “As of today, the circuit court has not remanded the case. BLNR cannot take action or provide instructions to anyone until this happens. It is not accurate to conclude from Mr. Stone’s reported statements that either state or university officials are holding up the process.”

Stone, who helped oversee the construction of the Keck Telescope on Mauna Kea, said the TMT board doesn’t want to go through another eight-year permitting process, and he’s really hoping the state will say it will take months rather than years to complete.

A time period measured in months, however, might be optimistic as project foes have promised to oppose and appeal the telescope at every step.

Stone urged the Chamber of Commerce audience Friday to raise a chorus of support for the project and help fight a legion of misinformation.

“You need to help the general population understand why the TMT is important to astronomy and to Hawaii,” he said.

It is estimated that astronomy in Hawaii has an economic impact of $168 million, including $91 million on Hawaii island alone.

Once completed, the TMT is expected to generate $26 million annually in observatory operations and will employ 140 people. The observatory also has agreed to contribute $800,000 per year to the Office of Mauna Kea Management and $200,000 per year to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, plus $1 million per year for science, technology, engineering and math education on Hawaii island.

Doug Simons, director of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, said much is at stake if Hawaii were to lose the TMT, including the flow of investment that helps underwrite the technology upgrades necessary to keep the Mauna Kea observatories at the cutting edge of science.

Simons said he just returned from a meeting in Japan, where he was greeted by colleagues who expressed “bewilderment, confusion and shell-shock” over the TMT setback.

“It’s a big blow to international astronomy,” he said.

Even now, Simons said he faces an uncertain future as he seeks $300 million for a planned transformation of his Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope from a 3.4-meter mirror to a 10-meter mirror.

“Unfortunately it’s a risky environment we find ourselves in,” he said.

Some audience members noted that TMT seems to be losing the battle among young adults in the social media realm, with supporters often getting bashed for publicly expressing their views. They suggested that TMT backers search for ways to counter the online opposition.

The TMT, one of a handful of next-generation “Extremely Large Telescopes” planned across the globe, was scheduled to start construction in 2015. But construction crews were blocked from reaching the work site on at least two occasions despite arrests and other attempts by law enforcement to support TMT’s right to access the summit.

The TMT partnership of the University of California and Caltech plus the national research organizations of Japan, India, China and Canada have spent more than $217 million in cash and in-kind contributions to the project, including $107.5 million in 2015 alone, officials said.

The observatory is expected to be one of the most powerful optical telescopes in the world, capable of seeing more than 13 billion light years away.