Kaʻū News Briefs, Saturday, August 10, 2019

THE COUNTY GENERAL PLAN DRAFT IS NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE, with recommendations for the future of Kaʻū. Download the draft and see future stories on its details in these daily Kaʻū News Briefs. A public meeting for input from Kaʻū will be held on Sunday, Aug. 25 at Nāʻālehu Community Center from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The public is invited to drop in anytime during the speak-out sessions, with displays and county Planning Department staff on hand to explain the County General Plan.

Download the General Plan

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THE NEW OCEAN VIEW CONVENIENCE CENTER on Highway 11 will become the exclusive public site in Ocean View for discarding trash and recyclables every Saturday, starting Aug. 17, from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Today marked the last day of using the temporary transfer station on Paradise Circle. The new facility is located between the 79 and 80 mile markers makai of Hwy 11.  
     The ConvenienceCenteris operated by the County of Hawaiʻi's Solid Waste Management Division. Atlas Recycling, Barbie Seto, Gerald Steele, and Shane Leffew will move over to the new facility to help out station next Saturday, said the crew manning the last day of the old transfer station.

     The long-awaited upgrade, near the intersection of Iolani Blvd.and Highway 11, has been promised since 2007. This set up is temporary, phase one of the project, costing nearly $2 million. The most expensive portion of this step was the widening of Hwy 11, to construct a "pocket lane" for motorists to turn out of traffic and enter the facility.

       The new temporary facility is gravel-paved with a large concrete pad for parking the garbage dumpsters and trucks, similar to the pad at the present temporary transfer station. The location takes up about an acre of the land that's reserved for the permanent facility.

     The county plans to build a facility similar to the ones at Volcano and Glenwood, which include the collection of mixed waste and green waste.

ASTRONOMERS ARE RETURNING TO WORK ON MAUNKEA after four weeks of suspended operations during the Protectors of Maunakea gathering that blocks the Maunakea Access Road. The Protectors are protesting the planned Thirty Meter Telescope project that would build the largest telescope on the planet near the top of Maunakea.
     On July 16, all Maunakea observatories chose to remove staff from the summit, stating a concern for safety and access to the telescopes. On Friday, the observatories' representatives said they feel secure in allowing the scientists to go back to work. The Protectors said they would have allowed scientists through the barricade much earlier.

     Said John O'Meara of W.M. Keck Observatory, "This is the longest the observatory has gone without doing science and we're really, really wanting to get back on sky. I'm really excited that we've made enough progress to be doing some science again." He remarked that it is "not a full return to operations. A full return to operations is going to have complete access to the summit access road, basically whenever we need it, and we need to be able to do so safely. But we have enough to do limited operations now and we're really looking forward to working with the state to regain access to the road, to have full operations."

Telescope operators are excited to return to Maunakea's summit, to continue "doing science," remarked John O'Meara, who works at the W.M. Keck Observatory. Photo from Maunakea Observatories

     Mary Beth Laychak, with the Canada France Hawaiʻi Telescope outreach team, said, "We're really excited about the support from the governor and the mayor. The first thing that our operations group is going to need to do is actually get up there and run all of our systems. We have the telescope, we have our dome shutter, we have hydraulics. All of these things haven't been operational in three weeks. So we need to make sure that they're up and ready to go." She said that as soon as the equipment is "ready to go, we should be able to resume our science," as theirs is one of the remotely operated telescopes.

     Keck observing assistant Heather Hershley, who works at the summit at night, said, "It's been somewhat frustrating not to be able to do the job that I was hired to do. Not physically being up there means that nothing gets done. I love my work on the summit. I get to see amazing sunsets. I get to be part of amazing discoveries. Maunakea is an amazing place and I've loved working on it. I dreamed about working on those telescopes since childhood, so this has been the best job I've ever had."
     See the astronomers speak at bigislandvideonews.com/2019/08/10/video-astronomers-excited-to-restart-limited-operations-on-mauna-kea/.