The University of Hawaii Board of Regents will hold a special meeting to consider, among other things, a new draft of an updated Maunakea Master Plan.
The meeting to be held on Thursday, Dec. 16, will be an “overall update on all things Maunakea,” said Greg Chun, UH’s executive director of Maunakea Stewardship. This will include a presentation the new draft, as well as recommendations from a Permitted Interaction Group formed by the Board of Regents in May to seek public input on the Master Plan.
Chun said the Board of Regents will seek public input about the contents of next week’s meeting until the next scheduled full board meeting on Jan. 20, when the board will actually take action on the items.
At the January meeting, the regents could choose to approve the Master Plan, approve it with amendments, or send it back for further revisions, Chun said. Should the board choose to approve it, the plan will be formally adopted.
The new draft of the plan has some substantive changes from a previous draft submitted for public comment earlier this year, Chun said. Most of those changes came as a result of that feedback, which included more than 1,450 comments, hundreds of which are interspersed throughout the text of the new draft submitted to the regents.
The draft Master Plan, which is titled “E O I Na Leo (Listen to the Voices),” would replace the existing Master Plan adopted in 2000 and serves as a framework for how UH will make land-use decisions on Maunakea.
According to a UH statement, the overarching goals of the Master Plan are to “broaden Native Hawaiian and community participation in planning and programming; reduce impacts to the natural resources, especially in the summit region, by limiting development; and create better balance among cultural, environmental, scientific and recreational interests.”
Doug Simons, director for UH’s Institute for Astronomy, said the Master Plan is the primary document that influences the future of astronomy on Maunakea and encouraged as much public feedback as possible.
“I’ve seen that document change many times before based on public feedback,” Simons said.
The draft is available for review at hawaii.edu/offices/bor/archive.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.