LA CROSSE, WIS. ? Searchers combing the Mississippi River this month pulled out the body of University of Wisconsin-La Crosse basketball player Luke Homan – the eighth college-age man in nine years to disappear from a city tavern and turn up dead in a river.

La Crosse officials have debated for years how to keep drunken students safe, but some say there may be no answer for a town with three colleges, three rivers and $3 pitchers of beer.

“I’m not sure anything we do can prevent a future tragedy,” Mayor Mark Johnsrud said.

Some officials want to rein in the binge drinking culture. Others have proposed fencing off the scenic waterfront.

But solutions have so far eluded this community where drownings and drinking have claimed lives for years. The city’s first recorded alcohol-related drowning was in 1867, according to the mayor.

The more recent string of deaths began in July 1997, when searchers pulled 19-year-old Richard Hlavaty’s body from the Mississippi River near a park. College wrestler Jared Dion became the seventh drowning victim in 2004 when his body turned up in the same park.

The community is saturated with thousands of students attending the University of Wisconsin’s La Crosse campus, as well as Viterbo University and Western Wisconsin Technical College. Downtown bars cater to young drinkers, offering booze at dirt-cheap prices.

Members of the La Crosse Area Underwater Rescue and Recovery Unit work along the shore of the main channel of the Mississippi River near the spot where University of Wisconsin La Crosse student Lucas G. Homan's body was found. Homan was the eighth college-age man in nine years to disappear from a city tavern and turn up dead in a river.

The community has a long tradition of drinking. Thousands of people converge on La Crosse every fall for its Oktoberfest, a dayslong party with abundant beer.

The city also lies where the Black and La Crosse rivers empty into the Mississippi. Hemmed in by rugged bluffs, LaCrosse is well-known for its scenery.

But the waterfront can be deadly. Investigators believe Dion fell off a levee that doubles as a pedestrian walkway and a dock for visiting paddlewheel boats. The levee had no railing, allowing him to tumble 10 feet into the frigid Mississippi.

His death brought to a head years of fears that a serial killer was stalking drunks. Police held a town meeting to reassure people, explaining that none of the victims was attacked. Investigators said the students had been drinking heavily and noted that Riverside Park is just two blocks from downtown bars.

A task force appointed to investigate the drownings made 19 recommendations ranging from building gates to the levee to creating alternative forms of entertainment and limiting Oktoberfest to one weekend.

But only a handful of those suggestions were adopted, including police patrols of house parties and an extra police shift to patrol bars.