The directors of an existing telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea evacuated employees Tuesday amid growing protests that have blocked an access road to the construction site of a second $1.4 billion "Thirty Meter Telescope" (TMT) to be built on the mountain, reports said.
Directors closed the East Asian Observatory located on Mauna Kea on Tuesday as a safety precaution for employees, effectively abandoning millions of dollars worth of instrumentation on telescopes at the facility that require constant maintenance, Hawaii News Now reported.
Police, the Hawaiian National Guard and self-described native "protectors" had been engaged in a tense standoff there since Monday's scheduled start of construction. On Wednesday, 33 people were arrested during a sit-in on the Mauna Kea Access Road, a state spokesperson told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Those arrested were booked on misdemeanor charges and immediately released.
Demonstrators reportedly abandoned vehicles in the middle of the Daniel K. Inouye Highway leading up to the Thirty Meter Telescope construction site. Police eventually drew back from the protest after a deal was reached that demonstrators would clear their cars from the road to allow construction equipment to be transported up the mountain, the newspaper reported.
https://www.foxnews.com/science/hawa...oyees-protests
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