Archive Documents Covering Rhode Island Coastal Flood Protection (1954-2002)

This is a repository of nearly 2000 primary and secondary documents covering the politics of coastal flood protection infrastructure projects form the 1950s through the end of the 20th century. Nearly all documents are from the 1950s and 1960s. They are in the form of mostly scans and photos and were collected from public and private archives between September and November 2019.

Documents include internal memos, project-related materials, and newspaper clippings from the New England District of the USACE archived at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration facility (Waltham, Massachusetts), personal papers from Congressman John E. Fogarty, Senator John Pastore, and Governor Dennis J. Roberts archived at Providence College, over three decades of newspaper articles on microfilm from the Providence Journal and Evening Bulletin archived at both the Rhode Island Historical Society and the Providence Public Library, and additional materials associated with the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier at the Providence City Archive (all Providence, Rhode Island).

A selection of documents from this repository were used to reconstruct event sequences associated with the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier in Providence Rhode Island and the proposed (but never built) Narragansett Bay Hurricane Barrier.

This selection of documents is in an organized folder tree, entitled "Rasmussen2022" and is used to support the arguments in a climate change adaptation study. As of February 2022, the study is under review with the Journal of Water Resources Policy and Management, "Coastal defense megaprojects in an era of sea-level rise: politically feasible strategies or Army Corps fantasies?", by D.J. Rasmussen, Robert E. Kopp, and Michael Oppenheimer.