Engineers started work Sunday on repairing a pumping station to begin draining floodwaters that flowed back into the impoverished Lower Ninth Ward in eastern New Orleans.

Earlier, helicopters dumped huge sandbags to finally close a gap in the Industrial Canal levee that had been overwhelmed by Hurricane Rita over the weekend, nearly one month after Huricane Katrina tore the bank open.

Gravel was also dumped on breaches on the canal's west side in a bid to shore up its battered banks.

"The good news is that the water's down. There's no water flowing into either the east side or the west side of the Industrial Canal right now," said Brigadier General William Grisoli of the Army Corps of Engineers.

But while pumping never stopped on the west side, engineers are working to fix the pumping station on the east side of the canal to start draining the Lower Ninth Ward, he said. The station was flooded by both Katrina and Rita.

The city already faced a titanic task of clearing debris, scrubbing the sludge off the streets and picking up the pieces scattered by the flooding brought by Katrina, which covered 80 percent of New Orleans at its peak.

Most of the water had been pumped out when Rita's winds brought a new wave of water over the fragile Industrial Canal levees. The new flood covered 15 percent of the city.

Mayor Ray Nagin hopes to resume gradual repopulation of the city as soon as Monday or Tuesday, starting with the Algiers district, which escaped Katrina's floods after August 29.

Most of the city's half-million residents fled Katrina, but plans to return were cruelly dashed by Rita.

"Katrina was the wash cycle, Rita was the rinse cycle," Nagin said. "I hope we get time to hang on the line and dry and not go into the spin cycle."

At least 841 people have been confirmed killed by Katrina in Louisiana alone, but state officials said no casualties were reported so far after Rita.

In a boost to the mayor's plan, the federal official in charge of the Katrina relief effort said he backed the resettlement of Algiers and the return of business owners in the downtown area.

"The first two steps, having the businessmen come back in and re-entry into the West Bank (Algiers) is not problematic at this time," Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad Allen told Fox News Sunday.

"I think the issue is the third section, and that's the rest of the city, where there was extensive flooding, the houses have been substantially damaged," Allen said. "And I think the mayor and I are aligned on this."

For the worst affected parts of the city, he said the first step should be to let residents check on their homes.

"In some cases, these people are going to find that their houses are completely destroyed and they're uninhabitable, and just going in and understanding that allows us to understand what the next steps are," he said.

Nagin had allowed business owners to return to the central business district and the historic French Quarter, the city's cultural center filled with jazz bars and Cajun restaurants.

But much of the city still has no power and potable water. Most restaurants remain closed and few bars stay open at night. Many homes and streets that were once underwater are now covered in mud.

The city is a ghost town but for troops, emergency workers and journalists. The city's cash cow, tourism, is gone.

In a bit of good news, however, Allen said it would take less time than predicted to drain the new flooding.

"The effort associated with unwatering the city will be far less than it was originally and we think we'll get that done in a matter of days," Allen said.

"We just about got it under control," Allen said.

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