Mayor Ray Nagin Acting Irresponsible Again ?

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."

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.

Jockeying Over Return to Big Easy Ongoing

New Orleans' mayor has the authority to let residents return to his hurricane-damaged city, but the Coast Guard official in charge of the federal disaster response said Sunday that all the information from health and environmental experts recommends against it.

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

I don't know if Nagin is stupid, crazy or both. It was this kind of nonchalance on his part that got his city into this mess to begin with.

Nagin's re-entry plan concerns federal official