Sir

Your News report “Astronomers bargain for use of 'sacred' site” (Nature 410, 1015; 2001) was an excellent overview of the cultural dimensions of the controversy on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. However, your story did not mention two other key issues fuelling local animosity towards the observatories — past mismanagement and proposals to limit public access.

In 1998, a legislative audit concluded that, during its 30-year tenure on Mauna Kea, the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy (together with the state's land board) had “failed to develop and implement adequate controls to balance the environmental concerns with astronomy development”. The audit also confirmed islanders' charges of broken promises, violated leases and ignoring of environmental laws.

After the audit, the university's president and the Institute for Astronomy blamed the public for problems on the mountain top, and proposed access restrictions that were later included in the university's second, flawed master plan, discussed in your report. All this has made the islanders even more upset.

Given this history, the quote by NASA's Keck programme manager, John Lee, that the organization does not want to “poison the well” for astronomy on Mauna Kea, seems ironic to many islanders. NASA and the international astronomy community need to understand that those 'toxins' were introduced by the Institute for Astronomy and the observatories, and will have to be removed by them before anything else is built on the mountain.