Spaceport Authority Would Have Vast Powers Under Management Plan

posted in: August 1993 | 0

The proposal to develop a commercial space launch facility in Ka’u, the state has said, depends upon attracting a commercial operator. If no corporation or consortium of corporations can be induced to build and operate the facility the idea will be dropped, according to the Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism.

But to make the spaceport attractive to any potential operators, the state would seem to have a great deal of latitude. According to various plans included in the unpublished Draft Environmental Impact Statement, the state would acquire control over the land needed to support spaceport operations (whether by purchase, easement, or other agreement with existing owners). It is to take the lead in the acquisition of such permits as may be needed from federal, state, and local authorities. It is to undertake such improvements as will be necessary- including significant improvements to Highway 11 and bridges, erection of power lines and substations (although plans call for this to be reimbursed after spaceport operations commence), and construction of new school facilities.

Bruce Plasch’s firm, Decision Analysts Hawai’i, Inc., prepared a study of economic, population and housing impacts of the proposed spaceport, which appears as Appendix A to Volume Ix of the Draft EIS. Plasch states that “some of the bridges between Hilo and Ka’u may need to be reinforced. To cover this cost, an allowance of $1 million is assumed.”

Improvements to control drainage on Highway 11 – which becomes impassable after heavy rains – will also be needed. These, he says, will cost $4 million. Bringing power to the site will cost $2.4 million, while improvements to schools needed to accommodate the increased population will cost $1.7 million. In addition, Plasch says, “an allowance of about $1.3 million is assumed for new facilities in support of new residence and visitors.”

The total cost of infrastructure (not counting the electrical service facilities) comes to $8 million – an amount that is roughly equal to what the state has spent to date in attempting to refine this proposal and attract an operator.

But the total could rise by more than $6 million (to $14 million), Plasch states, “if the Thiokol Castor 120 rocket motor is used… This new rocket motor weighs approximately 60 tons and is carried on a nine-axle tractor/ trailer… [T]he heavy load would gradually weaken the bridges between Hilo and Ka’u.” The reinforcements that would be needed to “restore their useful lives” to the bridges would cost, Plasch figures, $6 million.

Another factor not considered in Plasch’s study is the cost to the state of acquiring the land.

Offsetting the initial capital costs plus annual costs associated with providing services, Plasch states, would be net income to the state and county from spaceport operations totaling $7.7 million per year. The state would receive revenue from excise taxes, corporate and personal income taxes, and hotel room taxes (transferred to the county). The county’s income would be from increased property taxes (estimated to be $3.8 million annually), the hotel room tax ($200,000), and undefined “other revenues ($295 per new resident and per visitor)” amounting to $200,000 per year. Elsewhere, Plasch states that the state will lease the land it acquires to the private operators, but no lease fee or other rental income is included in his estimates of income.

‘Full Employment’

Building and equipping the spaceport (which Plasch calls simply “Spaceport”) is estimated to cost $420 million. Some 370 construction workers will find work there for the two and a half years required for construction. About 30 more are expected to find work in building support facilities. Spaceport operations will employ about 270 people full time. Transient workers will probably be used to support individual missions. Their numbers “will vary considerably over time, but the number is expected to average about 150 workers,” Plasch states.

The state has used the prospect of additional jobs – in an area where the agricultural base of the local economy is eroding fast – as one of the selling points of the spaceport, but never as the chief reason for the state’s pursuit of the project. Plasch puts a new twist on this argument, however. After reviewing the decline of the sugar industry, he notes that the two major resorts that had been proposed for development in Ka’u have not proceeded as planned. (One, the Hawaiian Riviera Resort proposed by Charles Chidiac, is extremely unlikely to go forward given Chidiac’s financial troubles. The second, at Punalu’u, is held up by financing and litigation problems.) Had those resorts been developed, Plasch states, the “economic, population, and social impacts resulting from this development would have been large. Other projects, such as Spaceport, would not have been needed to provide fill employment” in Ka’u.

Community Opposition

In any case, it is not at all clear that the people of Ka’u find the spaceport an acceptable tradeoff for employment, full or otherwise. Jon Matsuoka, of the University of Hawai’i School of Social Work, prepared an assessment of the sociocultural impacts of the project (Appendix C to Volume Ix of the DEIS). Following a survey of 231 residents of Ka’u (a district whose population is roughly 4,400), Matsuoka found that 65 percent were opposed to the spaceport, while just 20 percent stated they favored it. “In the area of social planning and community issues, respondents strongly believed that Ka’u’s rural lifestyle should be protected, there should be protection for Hawaiian customs, beliefs, and practices, and that subsistence practices were important.”

Shut Out

Opponents have maintained that their wishes have been ignored throughout the spaceport planning process. According to a draft spaceport management plan (prepared by Plasch, and included in the DEIS as Volume X, Appendix E), opportunities for citizen involvement in spaceport activities will be less, if anything, should the Legislature approve a spaceport authority established along the lines of that proposed therein.

The proposed spaceport authority “will have the power to represent the state in its dealings” with the private facility operators, which, in turn, are expected to form a consortium. Giving advice to the authority would be a technical and scientific advisory committee and a citizens’ advisory committee. Neither would have voting power in or veto power over the authority’s decisions. Plasch does not say how the technical committee is to be established, but he does give guidance for the citizens’ committee. They “should be residents of the Big Island who are active in community affairs and who, collectively, fully understand the goals and concerns of the community. Care should be taken to avoid committee membership to people whose positions are predictable (e.g., those who are members of special interest groups). Members should be appointed by the governor in consultation with the mayor of Hawai’i County.”

Far less attention is paid to the selection of the members of the Board of Directors to the spaceport authority itself. Members, Plasch writes, would include people “drawn from the international, U.S., and local communities… [who] should have proven expertise in such relevant fields as the space industry; management, environmental and resource monitoring and oversight; and education and training.” The authority so composed, Plasch states, “will represent the interests of the state.”1

As in the legislation Plasch drafted, the activities he anticipates being carried out by the authority assume it is given a high degree of autonomy. It will own the land on which spaceport facilities are built. It will sell “tax- exempt bonds and lend the proceeds of these bonds … to provide low-interest financing to the companies that comprise the consortium for construction of the common facilities and the users’ facilities.” The authority will collect payments from the consortium, and will use this income “to cover costs incurred… service the bonds, and invest any proceeds, as appropriate.”

The authority will make sure that users comply with the terms of all agreements they enter into with the authority, including “health and safety precautions imposed by the federal, state, and county governments; conditions on permits; collection of user fees; and protection of the environment, the shoreline, HVNP [Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park], and the natural characteristics of the skies above Mauna Kea and Mauna Lea observatories.” It will “have the power to arrest and detain trespassers,” Plasch says.

A Fallback Position

Should the Legislature not agree to establish an authority for spaceport oversight, the Office of Space Industry would seem to have developed a fallback position: operating the spaceport as an airport, under the state Department of Transportation’s Airports Division. According to “An Overview of Mechanisms for Acquisition and Control of Lands Necessary to Develop a Commercial Space launch Facility” (Appendix E of Volume IX, DEIS, prepared by Everett S. Kaneshige of the law firm Alston, Hunt, Floyd & Ing), “it is arguable that the project could be considered to be an ‘airport’ under” Chapter 261-1(3), Hawai’i Revised Statutes.

“If the project is an ‘airport,’ then state law specifically gives the state Department of Transportation the right, among other things, to establish, acquire, construct and maintain the project…. One area where it might be to the state’s advantage to have the project defined as an ‘airport’ would be in the area of zoning… Under state law, the DOT has the right to establish specific ‘airport’ zoning regulations which would give the state additional authority to regulate uses on adjoining parcels of land considered to be ‘Airport Hazard Areas’. Thus, if the project is an ‘airport,’ the state could promulgate zoning regulations, which would give it the right to evacuate, limit access, and control development on adjacent lands … without the necessity of having to negotiate and obtain the affected landowners consent…”

1. In this regard, it is worth noting that Plasch takes credit for having drafted the spaceport authority bill that was introduced in the 1991 Legislative session. For further discussion of that bill, see the July 1993 edition of Environment Hawai`i, [url=/members_archives/archives_more.php?id=1198_0_31_0_C]”Questions Surround Membership, Operations of Space Authority Advisory Board”[/url]. Subjected to withering criticism and ridicule, and unsupported by the head of DBEDT himself at the time, Murray Towill, the bill never made it out of committee. Plasch may, as this suggests, have other ties to the spaceport besides his role as subcontractor to MCM Planning in preparation of the EIS. His wife, Ginger, who works for DAHI, was an administrative assistant to Space Development Board member John Jeffries when Jeffries was director of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawai`i.

Volume 4, Number 2 August 1993