Bush Makes Return Visit; Two Levees Secured - New York Times

I wonder...are they pumping the putrid, dead-body laced water back into the lake untreated? Where's the environmental uproar?

"With those barriers at least temporarily restored, engineers began draining the flooded streets and sending the water back into Lake Pontchatrain, but carefully, using portable pumps set up at near the lake on the 17th Street canal. Gregory E. Breerwood, a city engineer, said, 'We intend to take it slowly so we don't overtax the pumps themselves, because they have not been in service for a while.'"

Update 9/07/05: The scientists have taken a common sense approach on pumping flood waters back into Lake Pontchatrain.

"...Some scientists outside government tended to agree that the risk of long-term damage to the coastal waters was not high. One reason is that the lake is fed by several rivers and flushed by tides through its link to the Gulf of Mexico.

There will probably be an "initial toxic slug" entering the lake but that will be diluted and degraded by bacteria, said Frank T. Manheim, a former geochemist for the United States Geological Survey who teaches at George Mason University and was a co-author of a 2002 report on pollution issues in the lake."