Oom papa oom papa oom papa mau-mau

In case you didn't have reason enough to surmise that Hell lies at 30 degress north latitude and 90 degress west longitude, all you have to do is watch its inhabitants get in a knock-down, drag-out, race-baiting fight over . . . garbage.

Because the Devil's in the details, you know.

This Times-Picayune report may read a bit like a review of a bad country-music concert, because there's enough mau-mauing going on to keep the Oak Ridge Boys singing "Elvira" until Hades starts to look like not-so-bad a deal by comparison:

A debate that started simmering last month over whether New Orleans' two highest-paid trash vendors are complying with the terms of their contracts boiled over Monday into a racial clash as dozens of black ministers and civil rights activists alleged that the City Council has singled out the deals because they are held by minority-owned firms.

Supporters of Richard's Disposal and Metro Disposal, both New Orleans companies owned and run by African-Americans, told council members during a hearing in advance of Friday's vote on the city's 2008 budget that any attempt by the council to change terms of the agreements, which Mayor Ray Nagin signed last year, would amount to racism and could incite activists to abandon the city in the throes of the winter tourism season.

"What is out of compliance if these men are doing their job?" Spiver Gordon, national treasurer of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, asked the council. "We don't need to come back here and dance around your cash registers. We're talking about economic boycott."

During a rally before the hearing on the steps of City Hall that drew about 100 supporters, including dozens of sanitation workers, SCLC regional Vice President the Rev. Byron Clay said the matter is not limited to the firms in question.

"For anyone to question the ethics and the honesty of either company is not only an assault to that company but to the entire community. They have done an excellent job of cleaning this city up," he said.

Last month, city officials acknowledged that a provision of the contract that Richard's and Metro signed calls for collecting "unlimited bulky waste," including demolition material. The city, however, is not requiring the contractors to pick up construction debris generated at properties under renovation because of Hurricane Katrina.

Instead, Nagin's sanitation director, Veronica White, has said the city requires the vendors to collect only debris that conforms with limits laid out in an ordinance adopted five months after Nagin signed the deals. She also has said that the contract's inclusion of an option for emergency collection of storm debris implies that such waste is not covered by the regular terms.

The companies' owners, Alvin Richard and Jimmie Woods, reiterated Monday a point they have made throughout the debate: that in bidding on the contracts last summer, they assumed city officials were following industry norms when they called for "unlimited bulky waste" collection. That refers to debris created in the course of ordinary life and by minor construction projects, they said, not the mountains of waste generated by a flood.