Some in New Orleans Can Go Home

Declaring that his flood-scarred, depopulated town “will breathe again,” New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said Thursday that the city’s historic French Quarter, downtown business district and other viable neighborhoods would reopen under a phased plan starting this weekend.

Defying predictions that the city would stagnate for months until essential services were restored, authorities decided to allow residents and businesses to begin returning to their homes under a staggered resettlement plan.

As many as 180,000 residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina will eventually be allowed to move back into homes and apartments that escaped overwhelming flood and storm damage, the mayor said.

“It is a good day in New Orleans,” Nagin said during a televised news conference. “The sun is shining. We’re bringing New Orleans back. This is our first step. We are opening up this city and almost 200,000 residents will be able to come back and get this city going once again.”

The move will quickly revitalize many of the city’s iconic, picturesque sections: the iron-gated balconies and neon-lighted strip joints of the French Quarter, the whitewashed Civil War mansions of the Garden District, and the vaulting hotels and office towers of the business district.

But even as he hailed his city’s semi-return, Nagin acknowledged that dwellings that housed half of the city’s 450,000 residents would have to be razed. “Most of the homes that were flooded that stayed in the water for a number of weeks will most likely be destroyed,” Nagin said.

Under a plan approved by Nagin and by state and federal officials, business owners will reenter this weekend. Residents will follow, returning to lightly damaged west bank and central city neighborhoods next week and then to the French Quarter on Sept. 26.

The decision to open large swaths of New Orleans followed the rapid retreat of floodwaters that still cover 40% of the city, and progress by repair crews in restoring electricity and water service.

The tipping point, Nagin said, was good news that came in a recent round of government-conducted environmental tests. The results showed that remaining floodwaters still contained dangerous bacteria and chemicals, but that the city’s air was safe to breathe.

The water, Nagin said, is “not good for you to drink or bathe in, just for flushing and firefighting. We’re working feverishly to make sure the water quality gets better. We still have a couple of major breaks and contaminated water that is seeping in through the leaks.”

Nagin’s remarks came as the hurricane’s death toll climbed to 558 in his state, and 795 total.

Nagin gave a nod to state officials and to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, whose officials he had sharply criticized last week for failing to move quickly to aid the city. At his side Thursday was Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, who took over the federal relief effort from former FEMA director Michael D. Brown, who resigned Monday.

“There has been an uncommon display of unity among federal, state and local folks to put together a reentry plan,” Allen said.

After business owners return this weekend, mostly to the French Quarter and the business district, residents of the west bank Algiers neighborhood will be allowed to return to their homes Monday “to live and clean up and do the things that are necessary,” Nagin said.

Next Wednesday and Friday, the city’s venerable Uptown section, which includes Tulane University and the affluent Garden District, will open.

“We will have life,” Nagin said. “We will have commerce. We will have people getting into their normal modes of operation and the normal rhythm of the city of New Orleans.”

Then, on Sept. 26, residents of the French Quarter will be allowed to return to the area’s lofty warren of Napoleonic-era apartments. Despite some flooding, Nagin said, the area remained “mostly high and dry and good, but since it’s so historic, we want to double- and triple-check before we fire up all the electricity in there.”

Nagin acknowledged that the city’s returning population would not surpass 250,000 until the city had replaced thousands of flooded and water-eroded homes -- a massive project that planners and officials said could take years.

A woman who identified herself as a resident of the Lower 9th Ward stepped up and asked Nagin when she could return to her neighborhood, where floodwaters receded in the last several days.

“Water was up to the roof [in that area] up until three days ago,” Nagin replied. “That’s most likely the area that will be opened up on the back end” of the city’s rebuilding effort.

In Baton Rouge, New Orleans evacuee George Richardson, 40, brightened at the thought of returning home. “Like in ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ if I could clap my heels, I’d be home. If I had three wishes, that’d be one of them,” said Richardson, a pathologist who has been sheltered since the flood at the Baton Rouge River Center.

“We’re going back to revive it,” said Herbert Valentine, 38, who was bused to two shelters in Arkansas before getting to downtown Baton Rouge. “It’s ours. We won’t let it die.”

Those returning to their homes in the next several weeks will do so at the risk of new flooding, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers director said Thursday.

Multiple breaches of the levees guarding Lake Pontchartrain will not be completely repaired until June, said Daniel Hitchings, a regional business director for the corps’ Mississippi Valley division.

“Any storm surge would enter right back in,” Hitchings said. “Don’t fool yourself, there isn’t any significant level of protection.” Much of New Orleans is under sea level, and he said some sunken New Orleans homes flood after 2 inches of rainfall.

Hitchings delivered new projections about when parishes would be “unwatered.” He said a lack of rainfall and the addition of new pumps had moved forward the dates when flooded regions would be completely dried.

Chalmette and St. Bernard Parish are expected to be dry by Tuesday, Orleans east and north Plaquemines by Sept. 30, Orleans Parish by Oct. 2 and south Plaquemines by Oct. 18.

Hitchings cautioned that “every drop of rain that falls inside the levee will have to be pumped.”

In New Orleans, a fire at Pump Station Six, near the formerly breached 17th Street Canal levee, put two large pumps temporarily out of operation -- one variable that could lengthen the amount of time before the city is completely dry.

Tom MacKenzie, an official with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency was clearing 47 miles of clogged flood control ditches and canals in Bay St. Louis, Miss., where Hurricane Katrina dumped debris about half a mile inland. In their present state, the ditches could not handle severe rain, he said.

MacKenzie added that many wild animals were probably killed or displaced during the storm “if they weren’t a climbing or flying creature.”

The storm surge was “pretty tough to get away from for a 4-foot creature,” he said.

In Houston, officials said efforts to find permanent housing for evacuees staying in four public shelters had hit unexpected snags, including a reluctance of some evacuees to rent housing in Houston until they were sure they couldn’t return to New Orleans.

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Riccardi reported from New Orleans and Powers from Baton Rouge. Times staff writers Stephen Braun in Washington, Tony Perry in Houston and Ralph Vartabedian in New Orleans contributed to this report.