Mayor Ray Nagin defended his plan to return up to 180,000 people to the ravaged city within a week and a half, despite concerns about the short supply of drinking water and heavily polluted floodwaters.

Coast Guard Vice-Admiral Thad Allen, head of the federal disaster relief effort, said on Saturday that Nagin's idea was both "extremely ambitious" and "extremely problematic."

But Nagin said his plan was developed in co-operation with the federal government and balances safety concerns and the needs of citizens to begin rebuilding.

"We must offer the people of New Orleans every chance for a sense of closure and the opportunity for a new beginning," he said.

Nagin said the Algiers, Garden District and French Quarter sections would reopen over the next week and a half, bringing back more than one-third of the city's half-million inhabitants. City officials later backed off setting a specific date for reopening the famous French Quarter the city's main tourist attraction.

Allen said a prime public health concern was the tap water, which in most of the city remains unfit for drinking and bathing. He said he was concerned about the difficulties of communicating the risk of using the water to people who return and might run out of bottled water.

Another concern is the risk of another storm hitting the region, threatening an already delicate levee system and possibly requiring residents to be evacuated again, he said.

Business owners were allowed back in to some sections of the city to begin the long process of cleaning up and rebuilding, part of Nagin's plan to begin reviving the city by resuming a limited amount of commerce.

But confronted with damage that could take months to repair, many said hopes for a quick recovery may be little more than a political dream.

"I don't know why they said people could come back and open their businesses," said Margaret Richmond, owner of an antiques shop on the edge of the city's upscale Garden District that was looted. "You can't reopen this. And even if you could, there are no customers here."

The Wal-Mart store in uptown New Orleans, built within the last year, survived the storm but was destroyed by looters.

If the store had not been looted, it could have been open in two weeks, Stonaker said. Now he doubts it will be open by January. "They'll have to gut it and start over," he said.

Algiers, a residential area located across the Mississippi River from downtown New Orleans, is scheduled to reopen on Monday (local time), the first neighbourhood to welcome back residents. Uptown, including the historic Garden District, was also scheduled to reopen this week.

All the areas to be reopened this week were spared Katrina's flooding. Electricity and clean water have been restored to some sections.

In the French Quarter, the hum of generators, the thumping of hammers and the whir of power tools cut through the air on Saturday as business owners were allowed in to survey the damage and begin cleaning up.

Source: China Daily