Deaths have been on the rise since the Army Corps of Engineers piled 4,700 tons of rock onto an old dam that crossed the river in Jefferson County. “The City must make challenging and difficult decisions created by federal demands,” Spencer wrote in a letter to the public on Friday.

The ex-judge’s reputation for integrity won him responsibilities and respect in Democratic and Republican administrations.

His family announced his death in a statement that called him an “extraordinary man” who “spent a lifetime fighting to protect his country and its precious rule of law.”