A pair of recent drownings have spurred passage of a new county ordinance mandating a life jacket for anyone getting in the water at Causey Reservoir.
"The ordinance might have saved their lives," Weber County Sheriff George Fisher said.The ordinance requires a U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket for swimming or any other water-related activities at Causey. Failure to wear a life jacket is a Class B misdemeanor punishable by a $299 fine and up to six months in jail.
In July 1988, a 17-year-old Washington Terrace boy drowned in the southern end of the reservoir as he was trying to swim to an area popular for cliff jumping.
Last August, a Hill Air Force Base airman drowned in almost the same spot. The airman's body was recovered in October, and the boy's the next month when the sheriff's office reopened the search.
Those two deaths bring to three the total number of drownings at the reservoir, said Sheriff's Capt. Wes Goldsberry, a member of the sheriff's volunteer underwater recovery unit.
Signs explaining the life jacket ordinance will be posted at Causey this summer.