"This is why I'm so determined to rebuild," said John Bowes, whose historic camp, once a getaway for Mayor Robert Maestri, was among 62 along Hayne Boulevard splintered by Hurricane Georges.

Bowes, president of the Hayne Boulevard Camps Preservation Association, is asking other camp owners clobbered by the September storm to follow his lead. If they don't invest in repairs and conform, if need be, to new building codes, it will mark the end of an era.

In its heyday, before television and air conditioning, hundreds of camps stood as thick as stepping stones along the 7-mile stretch of lakeshore between Downman and Paris roads. The rustic dwellings, with names like Walkway to Heaven, dated back to the early 1900s. Complete with restaurants and a music club or two, the area came to be called the poor man's Miami Beach.

But of the 70 camps that survived to face the 30 hours of battering surf produced by Georges, only five are in good enough shape to be repaired, according to official inspectors.

The go-ahead to repair translates into huge savings for owners because they won't have to follow new regulations, city building official Michael Centineo said.

Those whose camps are too far gone will need a permit from the city to rebuild, he said. And to get one they will have to do things such as submit professional plans, build at a 16-foot elevation, and tie into the city sewage line running on the other side of a railroad-topped levee and a four-lane roadway. That means getting written permission from the Norfolk Southern Railroad, the Army Corp of Engineers, the State Department of Lands and the New Orleans Levee District.

"It's no longer going to be a $10,000 fishing camp out there," Centineo said.

Bowes estimates the cost of the sewerage connection alone will be about $5,000 per camp.

Officials recently surveyed the Hayne area by boat and determined that five camps, bearing names such as Two Crabs, Camp-A-Nella's and Three Sons & Daughters, were less than 50 percent destroyed, a condition of the city's building code and flood-control ordinances that must be met in order to make repairs, Centineo said.

"There are a couple of people who don't like our review," Centineo said. "But we included a representative from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), a city representative and a Levee Board representative. And our decision is in keeping with the city code."

The city is in the camp owners' corner, Centineo said. The federal inspector "didn't want the city to allow any camps to rebuild or make repairs, and there's good reason," he said, since FEMA will bear the brunt of the hurricane cleanup. "And they feel they'll be back having to do this again, so they wanted to make a clean sweep this time."

The estimated cost of picking up camp debris and removing pilings is about $640,000, said Stevan Spencer, chief engineer with the Orleans Levee District. The state is expected to pick up 25 percent of the cost and FEMA the balance, he said.

But the cleanup "hasn't even begun" and isn't necessary, Bowes said. Camp owners and looters have picked up most of the storm debris, and what's left along the rocky lake edge is mostly wood that will decompose, he said. And pilings poking above the water with nothing left to hold should remain to mark where destroyed camps need to be rebuilt.

"As long as I can keep these pilings out here, I can keep the footprint of the original camps," he said.

Bowes, who hopes officials will declare the area historic, savored a steady lake breeze last week in the doorway of one of the five camps eligible for repairs. He bought the place after the storm and will fix it up before rebuilding the old Maestri camp, which he bought about 25 years ago.

"As president of the camp association I need to lead the charge to rebuild this piece of our city's history," Bowes said. "And I will not be defeated."

Dealing with city, state and federal regulations "is a complicated issue," Centineo said. "We've been trying to work with everybody, but it takes a lot of juggling."

The release of raw sewage into the lake by camps has drawn fire for years from environmentalists. Health officials have been pressuring camp owners and the Orleans Levee Board, which issues levee-crossing permits, to build a sewage treatment system for the area. But with the cost projected in the millions, talks repeatedly stalled over who would pay.

Now officials say the five camps that remain within the city code can continue to use their present sewage systems, Centineo said, because "the (state) health department had never posted them as being in violation before." Camp owners who will need to rebuild must pay to tie directly into the city sewerage line.

But the approved method of hooking into the city line has yet to be determined, Spencer said. He believes the owners will have to run the connection up and over the levee, then under Hayne.

The Corps of Engineers is "concerned about the levee," Spencer said. "And the railroad is going to take an interest in what's going on." These agencies must approve any action by camp owners to use the levee, and the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development must approve drilling beneath Hayne before the Levee District will issue a permit for the sewerage connection, he said.

The bottom line is camp owners will be putting up a lot of money and putting up with of lot of bureaucracy.

But Bowes is ready for the challenge.

"It all comes down to do you want to be there or don't you?" he said. "And I want to be there."