NOW the Mayor is in a Hurry

The mayor of New Orleans, who waited until it was too late to order an evacuation and didn't press all of his assets into service to get the people out of town (remember the buses), is now in hurry to get back into town, despite the fact that the infrastructure isn't ready for them. Vice Admiral Thad Allen, who is running the FEMA response, is not too happy with Hizzoner:

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

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

But Nagin said his plan was developed in cooperation 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 draw.

Allen said a prime public health concern is 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.

Allen, who planned to meet with Nagin on Monday, said federal officials support the mayor's vision for repopulating the city, but he is concerned about the mayor's timeline.

"Our intention is to work with the mayor ... in a very frank, open and unvarnished manner," he said.

Vice Adm. Allen knows that if the people come back and there's a health crisis due to a lack of clean water, he's going to get the blame, not the mayor. I'm guessing that the mayor's plans will be significantly scaled down by Vice Adm. Allen. Either that or the Vice Adm. will be forced to go before the press and explain why Hizzoner is being foolish, and that won't be pretty.