The projects faced different reviews on state conservation and private land

Federal officials are building a two-story, 56,000-square-foot laboratory and data center in Kīhei that would remotely operate telescopes planned for Haleakalā. The nearly $100 million Secure Integration Support Laboratory is under construction at the Maui Research and Technology Park, while the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force have proposed up to seven telescopes in a state conservation district on the mountain’s 10,000-foot summit.

Construction of the South Maui facility began in late 2024 and is expected to be completed early next year, according to the government contract awarded to Hensel Phelps. An April 2023 design document says the project was designed to consolidate all of the U.S. Space Force 15th Space Surveillance Squadron’s operations across Maui from four facilities into one. It will include a high-performance data center, laboratories, a remote telescope operations center, offices, a conference center, warehouse space and associated infrastructure.

Residents seek disclosure as review paths diverge

The two projects followed separate timelines. Federal officials from the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force finalized plans for the Kīhei facility around the same time they proposed adding the telescopes to the military’s existing space-surveillance complex. The telescope proposal received more public attention, while the Kīhei project received little attention for several years.

Environmentalists, Native Hawaiian advocates and other Maui residents have in recent weeks called attention to the planned South Maui facility and criticized the military for failing to more explicitly disclose its connection to the new telescopes planned for Haleakalā’s 10,000-foot summit. Hina Kneubuhl, an organizer with Protect Haleakalā, a collective of Hawaiian cultural practitioners, environmentalists, community leaders and others working to protect culturally significant landscapes, said introducing the projects in separate steps circumvented questions about the relationship between the two projects and their cumulative environmental impact.

“They segment these projects, and it’s so deceptive. All of us who don’t have time to do this, were trying to catch them while we’re catching all of these balls flying in the air,” Kneubuhl said during an Office of Hawaiian Affairs community listening session on Maui earlier this month.

The projects face different review paths. Because the telescopes would be built on state land set aside for the federal government, the proposal cannot move forward until military officials complete an extensive environmental impact statement and a review process that includes opportunities for public feedback. The Kīhei facility, called the Secure Integration Support Laboratory, or SISL, is being built on private property the federal government purchased in 2023, so officials were only required to complete an environmental assessment, a less rigorous process than an environmental impact statement. In the 2022 draft assessment, Air Force officials concluded that no significant adverse effects would result from building the facility.

Residents question water, electricity and fuel impacts

The 437-page environmental assessment did not say how much water the facility would use and did not include detailed information about the project’s water consumption. It projected that consolidating the military’s operations would result in reduced water and energy consumption by the Air Force on Maui over the life of the facility. It identified additional “short-term minor adverse effects on potable water use” during the early stages of the project. The draft proposed supplying water from an existing Maui County reservoir at the eastern end of Lipoa Road and adding a new half-million-gallon storage tank to increase capacity.

Lisa Yamada raised the issue during the OHA meeting last week. “Where is the transparency regarding its water and electricity demands?” Yamada said. “Our families, farmers and communities are already struggling for these precious resources. Our ʻāina and wai should not be sacrificed for military expansion.” She added, “Our younger generations are rising to protect our kūpuna, our culture and our ʻāina.”

Public records show that communication between federal and county officials related to the project occurred during Mayor Michael Victorino’s administration. Military officials did not respond to questions seeking that information on Monday, and the county Department of Water Supply could not be reached for comment Monday.

The assessment proposed an emergency 2,500-kilowatt generator, a 12,000-gallon tank and three 20,000-gallon tanks to store a two-week supply of diesel fuel capable of powering the entire building during an electricity outage. Some residents have raised concerns about storing that much fuel in the wildfire-prone area, particularly because federal officials have not yet finished cleaning up a 720-gallon diesel fuel spill caused by a lightning strike at the Maui Space Surveillance Complex on Haleakalā in January 2023. Public concerns about military fuel storage also followed the Navy’s underground oil storage facility at Red Hill on Oʻahu, which leaked in 2021 and poisoned tap water for thousands of residents and service members in the area.

The planned facilities have a direct technical link. Like existing military operations in South Maui, the Kīhei facility would be connected to and receive data from the Maui Space Surveillance Complex on Haleakalā’s summit via fiber optic cable, according to the draft environmental impact statement for the telescopes.

Federal officials cite a need for expanded space surveillance

Despite years of pushback from residents, federal officials have maintained that the military needs new telescopes and improved space-surveillance capabilities on Maui to track and identify threats among satellites and other objects orbiting the Earth above the Pacific. In addition to concerns about the potential negative impact on cultural and environmental resources, many community members have expressed worry that the military could use new facilities on Maui for war-fighting efforts and that the island could soon become a target for foreign adversaries.

Those concerns were compounded last month when federal officials confirmed at a conference in Maryland that the U.S. Air Force had already deployed weapons into Earth’s orbit. The officials said the U.S. Space Force was seeking to double in size over the next five years as space became an increasingly important war-fighting domain. The U.S. Space Command also published a document stating that fixed infrastructure could soon be targets for adversaries who could attack “through cyber intrusion, directed energy, precision fires or sabotage.”

Broader data-center debate accompanies unclear projected water use

The military data center is part of a larger facility, and it would not be the first on Maui or even at the Maui Research and Technology Park. A data center already exists at the Maui High Performance Computing Center, according to the draft assessment. Public records indicate that the Kīhei facility will likely include infrastructure that uses water for cooling hardware that generates heat during operation, but it was not immediately clear what the projected water usage would be. Different types of data centers vary in their use of power and water, and not all rely on the massive amounts that hyperscale and artificial-intelligence data centers do. Public resistance to data centers has grown, fueled by concerns about the environmental and community impacts of the hyperscale data centers rapidly being built across the country to power an artificial intelligence boom. Hawaiʻi County recently joined hundreds of other U.S. communities that have introduced regulations or enacted moratoriums on data-center construction.

The Haleakalā telescope proposal still requires an environmental impact statement, a federal review process and opportunities for public feedback before it can move forward. The Kīhei laboratory is already under construction under the environmental assessment process, which did not include detailed water-use figures.