Weather experts have forecast eight-to-10 hurricanes -- six of them major -- between now and November 30 and engineers have warned that New Orleans' levees could not withstand another battering.

The city marked the start of the new season still under the dark shadow of Katrina, the August 29 mega storm which left 1,300 dead and tens of thousands homeless.

At the Tad Gormley Stadium, which flooded during Katrina, the Women of the Storm activist group held a demonstration to demand support for billions of dollars of levee repairs, new housing and other hurricane relief.

The women stood on a giant map of the United States to illustrate how many members of Congress still have not toured Louisiana's hurricane-shattered coast.

"We are shocked that 400 US senators and representatives have not found the time to visit the site of the worst natural disaster ever to strike our nation," said Anne Milling, found of Women of the Storm.

Milling says the state is especially vulnerable to hurricanes this season, because erosion continues to eat away at Louisiana's coastal wetlands at the equivalent of a football field every 30 minutes.

Scientists and environmental activists say that the wetlands are nature's barriers against hurricanes.

America's Wetlands, an environmental group, was set to release a public opinion poll and a new report by international team of scientists bolstering argument for funding restoration of coastal wetlands as a defense against future hurricanes.

New Orleans is also worried about rebuilding.

At Tulane University's School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine a two-day symposium started on New Orleans recovery, with topics ranging from debris removal to improving the mental health of storm victims.

A separate symposium is concentrating on how to restore the city's unique culture. Hundreds of musicians have yet to return to the city since Katrina.

The city's criminal court building reopened Thursday for the first time since Katrina flooded its basement. Trials resumed on Monday, but only in seven of the 13 courtrooms, and with a backlog of more than 5,000 cases.

Amid a rising tide of shootings and homicides, local criminologist Peter Scharf said the criminal justice system is operating far below capacity. "Everyone's criminal justice system is better than ours so the criminals will come home where it's safe," he said.

The hurricane watch extends up much of the US east coast -- and five out of nine projected hurricanes were expected to rank as intense storms, according to Philip Klotzbach and William Gray, two leading US climate risk experts from Colorado State University.

Klotzbach and Gray said Wednesday that there was an above-average risk of a major hurricane landfall in the Caribbean Sea, and that the US east coast was under a much higher-than-average risk of being struck.

They also said they expected 17 tropical storms to be generated during the Atlantic season, including nine hurricanes.

Other estimates have said there will be between eight and 10 hurricanes.

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