NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 11 - You cannot drink it, you cannot bathe in it, you can barely stand the smell of it. No child stands ankle-deep in it with plastic bucket. No preacher wades into it to baptize a sin-sullied flock.
What laps against this city's shores, and some of its homes, churches and stores, is not water but a kind of anti-water. Green-black more than blue-green, it evokes nothing of the cathartic promise that Bruce Springsteen often sings of, only destruction, disease and death.
When not posing a threat, Lake Pontchartrain here has offered relief, joy, a point of reference. The Choctaw tribe called it Okwa-ta, meaning "wide water"; a French explorer named it after some marine minister back home. It has provided fish for food, waves for fun, backdrops for amusement parks. The earliest jazz wafted over its waters from lakefront resorts.
Two weeks ago, parts of the levees that held the lake in tenuous check gave way in the roar of Hurricane Katrina, releasing billions of gallons of brackish water into this city below sea level. It claimed lives, caused oil spills and flooded hundreds of wastewater-treatment plants - all to create a black curtain that drew across the way of life here, as if to signal the end of one act in a long, long play. [Read more - NY Times]
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