Munger tried to narrow the inquiry's focus: "This is not about cumulative impacts to the mountain, such as pesticides." Though the hearing officer often sustained the frequent objections of the U.H. attorneys to the questioning by the critics, on the second day he declared, "It is my opinion that cumulative impacts should be considered."

"The problem that brought us to this contested case will not be solved by a narrow approach," the Sierra Club's Nelson Ho countered the U.H. lawyer in his opening statement. "What brought us here is 30 years of mis-management. This case is about the mistreatment of a culture and environmental injustice. Mauna Kea is a sacred landscape and a rare and vulnerable ecosystem. Changes in institutional behavior must be made," he declared.

The opposition worked to allow a wider range of testimony. Naturalist Ho asserted, "This project is the beginning of the next wave of telescopes. We should not let this go with the cursory mitigation of the applicants. We need to pull back the covers and analyze the applicant's intentions. The next generation of telescopes could be 5,000 times the size of those there now."