With a growing number of the city's permanent water pumps operational, the city can be cleared of 11,300 cubic feet per second, said US Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Dan Hitchings.

"That is roughly equal to the size of 432 Olympic-size swimming pools," he told journalists in Baton Rouge, Louisiana's state capital.

Some 37 out of 174 permanent pumps are operational, up from 23 on Wednesday Hitchings said, adding that 17 out of 160 portable pumps are also draining the water-logged city, an operation that officials have said could take up to three months.

The receding waters are expected to reveal thousands of bodies of victims claimed by the flooding that has displaced around one million people.

The pumps began working again when power was restored to them after it was cut off by Hurricane Katrina on August 29, breaching the levees that kept the waters of Lake Pontchartrain out of New Orleans.

Hithchings said officals could not yet provide a depth for the water, that covers about 60 percent of the city of jazz, but had taken readings early Thursday to gauge future drops in the water level.

Earlier, the Louisiana state Department of Transportation and Development said all pumps in the metropolitan area were pumping 8,041 cubic feet, or about 60,000 gallons, of water per second out of the city.

In addition to kickstarting the network of pumps, the state transport department is repairing traffic signals and road signs while inspecting bridges and roads damaged across the state.

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