By: United States Army Corps of Engineers
Published: Jul 11, 2007 at 08:36
The United States Army Corps of Engineers today released the draft
Hurricane Protection Decision Chronology (HPDC) for the Lake
Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project (LP&VHPP)
in the Greater New Orleans area. The report is being released for a
30-day public comment period during which time the report's authors are
soliciting any additional relevant documentation that was not available
to them while compiling the draft.
The HPDC is an exhaustive examination of the complex 50-year record of
LP&VHPP decision-making and project implementation involving the
Corps, local sponsors, government at all levels, and the courts.
The Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, John Paul Woodley,
Jr., and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Director of Civil Works,
Major General Don Riley, commissioned the HPDC shortly after Hurricane
Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of the United States on August 29, 2005.
Woodley said, "The Hurricane Protection Decision Chronology, while
important because of what it tells us about the past, will be of even
greater value as a national resource for planners and decision-makers
to make better future decisions about the nation's critical public
works infrastructure.
"This is an opportunity to learn from the past to inform the future."
The 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 that
was in place when Katrina struck.
The HPDC is a separate, but complementary, report to the Corps-
commissioned Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force study that
analyzed the performance of the LP&VHPP during hurricanes Katrina
and Rita. The HPDC seeks to answer the "why" and "how" of the hurricane
protection system that was in place when Hurricane Katrina made
landfall by documenting the record of decisions, planning and design
that led to that system. The IPET report is a "what happened" record of
the system's performance during the hurricanes.
Donald Powell, Chairman of the Gulf Coast Rebuilding Office, said, "I
commend the Army Corps of Engineers on commissioning this independent
study. Such a thorough analysis is an important step toward greater
transparency and accountability in the decision-making and budgeting
process.
"This report speaks to the commitment of the Corps and its leadership
to communicating risk and providing quality engineering services to the
nation."
The Corps Institute for Water Resources commissioned an independent
study team of Drs. Douglas Woolley and Leonard Shabman, water resources
planning and policy experts, to conduct the HPDC inquiry and prepare
the report. The draft HPDC is based on all known available records
related to the LP&VHPP in the custody of the Corps and of limited
records volunteered by the state and local governments.
The HPDC was reviewed by the Corps to help identify missing documents
and errors of logic, and externally reviewed by the National
Association of Flood and Stormwater Management Agencies.
Maj. Gen. Don T. Riley, Director of Civil Works for the Corps, said,
"Both the chronology and the IPET studies have contributed in
meaningful ways to the ongoing hurricane damage reduction work we are
doing around New Orleans and to the Corps' new initiatives.
"The Chronology in particular serves to emphasize the importance of
using systems approaches in our public works infrastructure; adaptive
management over the life of projects; and the critical importance of
understanding risk management and effectively communicating that risk
to the public and decision makers," said Riley.
The Hurricane Protection Decision Chronology is available on the
internet at
http://www.iwr.usace.army.mil/inside/products/pub/hpdc/hpdc.cfm. The
public comment period to submit relevant additional documentation runs
though August 10, 2007.
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