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HPDC Final Report (pdf, 2.2MB)
HPDC
References
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HURRICANE PROTECTION DECISION
CHRONOLOGY
ORIGIN AND PURPOSE
The Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, the Honorable John
Paul Woodley, Jr., and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) Director
of Civil Works, Major General Don Riley, commissioned the Hurricane
Protection Decision Chronology (HPDC) shortly after Hurricane Katrina
struck the Gulf Coast of the United States on August 29, 2005. The Corps’
Institute for Water Resources (IWR) was asked to convene an external HPDC
team to collect, record, and analyze project memoranda, reports, and
related documentation in order to describe and explain decision-making for
the Lake Pontchartrain & Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project
(LP&VHPP).
The requested report was to provide an explanation, as opposed to an
evaluation, of how Corps policies and organization, legislation, and
financial and other factors influenced the decisions that led to the
LP&VHPP protective structures in place when Hurricane Katrina struck
the Gulf Coast. The HPDC focus on project decision-making is intended to
complement the engineering forensics investigations on the performance of
the LP&VHPP during Katrina, such as those conducted by the Interagency
Performance Evaluation Task Force and other institutions.
The IWR established the independent HPDC team of Drs.
Douglas Woolley and Leonard Shabman, both water resources planning and
policy experts, to conduct the inquiry and prepare the HPDC. IWR supported
the HPDC team throughout its inquiry.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is committed to open, transparent
communication with the American public about what we have learned in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Towards that end, the HPDC Final Report (pdf, 2.4 MB) and library
of project-related documents used in its preparation are made
available here for public review.
The independent HPDC authors are solely responsible for the
content of the HPDC Final Report, and that report does not necessarily
represent the official position of the United States Army Corps of
Engineers or the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil
Works.
Revised 10 Oct 2008 |
