Last week’s unanimous decision by the state’s high court has further complicated the already murky future of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), a project that, while still offering great potential benefits to the state and to science internationally, will undoubtedly remain a flash point among those contesting its cultural and environmental impacts.

Hawaii’s Supreme Court ruled against two state agencies, the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL), and agreed with the plaintiffs that the state wrongly took control of the Mauna Kea Access Road, without compensation.

What happens now will depend on how efficiently the state can settle with DHHL beneficiaries who the court agreed deserved consultation as required by the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act.

The optimal outcome would be a fair settlement with minimal disruption to the ongoing and future prospects for astronomy on the summit of the mountain, which some in the Native Hawaiian community hold to be a sacred, culturally important resource.

Achieving that result could ultimately greatly benefit the state. It’s still possible to get there while protecting natural and cultural resources.

But it will be a heavy lift. The ruling clearly has dealt a blow to the TMT.

The conflict reached a peak in 2019 when, after securing permits from the state Board of Land and Natural Resources, the state closed the access road and arrested 38 of the protesters who occupied it in massive demonstrations that summer. The state converted the access road to a state highway, designated as Route 210.

The court challenge was filed by a group of DHHL beneficiaries, including prominent names such as Pualani Kanaka‘ole Kanahele and Keali‘i “Skippy” Ioane. DHHL is the state agency that administers the century-old federal Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, the law that underlies the land bank for providing homesteads for those with 50% or greater Native Hawaiian blood quantum.

DHHL owns the land on which the access road serving the existing telescopes were built. DOT, the justices found, did not have the authority to take over the road without permission from the beneficiaries. The case now goes back to the lower court to direct the state’s damages or compensation for use of the road.

The proposal to build the TMT was the trigger setting off the protests, starting with lengthy land board challenges, partly because of its 18-story dimensions. But the opponents also pressed for removal of existing and obsolete telescopes.

Criticism of the way the University of Hawaii managed the astronomy campus led to an agreement by UH to decommission older telescopes. And UH has made good-faith efforts. The first on a list of five, the Hoku Kea Observatory, came down last week. The removal of the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory is underway.

Further, lawmakers acted to transition control of the summit to a new Mauna Kea Stewardship and Oversight Authority, which has been meeting since November 2022, to give a range of stakeholders greater voice.

Hope should persist that the wider discussion would take down the temperature of the controversy and lead to greater balance in discussions that had become hopelessly combative.

The state should work to stay on a solutions-oriented path, as DHHL crafts a process for beneficiary consultation over the road. These consultations should be focused on compensation, rather than becoming a wedge to derail the astronomy mission.

The pursuit of science on Mauna Kea can be done with respect to the culture of Hawaii, whose ancestral people themselves found knowledge in the stars.