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 |
