GALVESTON — Island residents will be allowed to come home within the next seven days, City Manager Steve LeBlanc announced Friday.

AP photo

Coleman Levine, left, leans on his sister Burreas Louis for support as she walks him home in time for the evening curfew in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, in Galveston.

He would not commit to a specific start date but said the phased re-entry would take three days.

Residents who live behind the seawall will be allowed in first, followed by residents with addresses between the end of the seawall and Jamaica Beach and then the rest of the West End.

As cars come through the causeway checkpoint, police officers will hand out fliers with information about what kind of city services residents can expect when they come home, LeBlanc said.

Conditions will not be as nice as they were before, he said.

Electricity most likely will not be restored by then. City crews are working to restore the city’s wastewater treatment plants as soon as possible. Crews already have re-established water service to almost all areas behind the seawall.

Residents will be allowed either to stay permanently or to come and go as they please, Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said.

State and local health officials continue to describe Galveston as unlivable, mostly because of the lack of a working sewer system.

But LeBlanc said he would not ask the Federal Emergency Management Agency to bring portable toilets to distribute through the neighborhoods.

“That’s a bit impractical,” he said. “The best thing to do is to get our own sewer system back up and running.”

Money was not an issue, LeBlanc said. But having portable toilets line city streets was not what anyone wanted, he said.

But portable toilets will be placed around the Bolivar Peninsula for residents, said state Rep. Craig Eiland.