Two Telescopes Stop Paying Rent on Mauna Kea and another cancels $500M upgrade-DeFries Doesn’t Notice
by Andrew Walden
Earlier this year, developers of the Thirty Meter Telescope and another unnamed observatory stopped paying rent on their Mauna Kea sites. Another telescope upgrade project was cancelled--and Mauna Kea Stewardship Oversight Authority (MKSOA) Director John DeFries went for nearly a year without noticing.
That’s the upshot from a previously unreported exchange of letters between University of Hawaii officials and MKSOA, mostly regarding a bill proposed for the 2026 legislature, included in the ‘board packet’ for the December 11, 2025 MKSOA meeting.
Akamai readers will remember the job DeFries did at HTA. That’s what earned him the MKSOA appointment.
In their November 20, 2025 letter to MKSOA, UH President Wendy Hensel and Regents Chair Gabriel Lee explain:
We are informed that the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) project was paused indefinitely at CFHT last year. This approximately $500M replacement for the Canada France Hawaii Telescope was in a planning phase for about a decade. The design featured reusing the bulk of the existing CFHT building while upgrading the telescope to a larger aperture and outfitting it with an advanced system of multi-object spectrometers. The CFHT Board terminated all work on MSE after their Board meeting last December. This was in large part due to the recognition that securing the funding for such a project was essentially impossible w/out a long-term lease in place for CFHT. Relatedly, TIO has not been able to make rent payment and another observatory has fallen in arrears in making monthly payments for their share of fixed costs. The concerns in this regard continue to escalate.
The November 30, 2025 response from MKSOA Chair John Komeiji and Executive Director John DeFries exposes the near-total lack of interaction between telescope operators and MKSOA:
Your reference to the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) project being terminated by a decision at Last year's board meeting due to the absence of a Long-term lease is surprising since this subject did not arise in a Q&A segment with De Fries at last year's meeting. The upcoming CFHT board meeting is scheduled for December 10-11 and De Fries will seek clarification at that time.
CFHT Directors announced their decision to pause MSE on their website after their December, 2024 meeting.
In their November 20 letter, Hensel and Lee explain:
The highest strategic priority for the University is and has been lease renewal, and the bill (being drafted for the 2026 legislative session) does not address the multifold concerns arising from the fact that the master lease for the science reserve expires in 2033. 2
Astronomy on Maunakea requires investment by the countries, scientific agencies, and universities that currently hold valid subleases and permits to operate the observatories. That investment pays for, among other things, Maunakea Access Road to be maintained so that all members of the public can reach the summit of Maunakea, not just observatory employees. The bill would establish unprecedented regulatory and legal authority in one agency, with challenges likely3. Uncertainty is not conducive to investment, and our greatest concern is that the lack of progress to establish a stable state governance structure as of July 1, 2028, discourages the necessary investment that enables not just scientific discoveries and high-quality jobs, but access to the mauna by practitioners and members of the public alike. This uncertainty has already resulted in dis-investment on the order of approximately half a billion dollars, given the lack of a long-term lease in place4 , and TIO is exploring the Canary Islands as an alternative site; no one is willing to fund major projects without long-term leases in place. It also goes without saying that the fewer the number of observatories, the higher the amounts of investment needed from the remaining observatories.5
In response, MKSOA essentially confirms that delay is a strategy with dis-investment as the intended result and that all progress on Mauna Kea depends on their alleged efforts to convince anti-telescope protesters not to wield the heckler’s veto given to them by Act 255 of 2022:
If our respective experiences have taught us anything, it is that we should strive to move at the speed of trust, rather than being driven by the expedience of transaction. Lease extensions, approval of new encumbrances, resource permits and other actions that appear to assert the interests of a single sector above all others are likely to be met with the same dissent and resistance that have caused so many past projects to become mired in contested cases, litigation, protests, arrests and discord ... myriad expressions of frustration and dispute escalations that have frayed the fabric of our society and confounded investors and community alike.
Therefore, our emerging theory of transformation prioritizes transparency, inclusivity, silo-busting, educating, balancing interests, integrating knowledge systems and consensus-building. And as our strategic framework emerges, we must then demonstrate accountability by adopting policies and rules respectively, to ensure that our regulatory decisions comport with our desired strategic outcomes.
This is the backdrop for our consideration of your requests to address the matter of lease renewal for the Mauna Kea Scientific Reserve. While we respect that this is the University's "highest strategic priority," we cannot negotiate the lease in a vacuum. Indeed, we believe that to do so would turn considerable public sentiment against the University, exacerbate the "uncertainty [that] is not conducive to investment" and jeopardize your long-term interests.
Actually telescopes on Mauna Kea are very popular. The antis are a small minority who won only because Mayor Harry Kim ordered police to stand down.
The path forward is shown by the experience on Haleakala where anti-telescope protesters were arrested by Maui County police and telescope construction has since continued unimpeded.
---30---
Correspondence Between UH System Leadership and MKSOA
BACKGROUND