Picture this:

You're driving down the road and birds begin to fall from the sky. Not just one or two but dozens. Hundreds.

In backyards, parks and playgrounds you see other dead wildlife. Scores of dead squirrels, possums and raccoons litter the ground. News reports tell you dead alligators and turtles are being found in significant numbers. Even a few Florida panthers are turning up dead.

It would be regarded, rightly, as a terrifying catastrophe. And yet something very similar is already happening here in Florida.

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At a weekend forum in Palm City, the mayor of Sanibel, Kevin Ruane, cited an astonishing statistic: Along Florida's Gulf coast, some 480 tons of dead sea animals have been plucked from the beaches.

The region has been ravaged by a vicious red tide, and Ruane teamed up at the forum with Treasure Coast Congressman Brian Mast to ask the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to change the way it manages water levels in Lake Okeechobee. Blue-green algae from the lake has choked both the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers; nutrients in the lake water have fed the red tide blooms, Ruane said.

Sea life isn't the only casualty. In Martin County, one dog has died after coming into contact with blue-green algae, and others have been sickened. Indeed, the algae has sent dozens of people to emergency rooms for treatment.

Mast wants the Corps to lower the water level in the lake during the dry months and raise the water level during the rainy season to reduce the need for discharges. But, as in the past, Corps officials said it's not so simple. South Florida's flood control system wasn't built to protect the environment; it was built to protect people.

And in that, said Lt. Col. Jennifer Reynolds, the Corps' deputy commander for Florida, the system has been fantastically successful. She acknowledged the flood control system causes environmental damage and noted the Corps is conducting a study to determine the feasibility of altering lake levels.

It will be completed around the time work on the dike around the lake is finished — in 2022.

One wonders how many more millions of dead sea animals will have washed ashore by then.

Reynolds was correct in saying the problems caused by the discharges have been compounded by Florida's growth. More people than ever need protection from floods and runoff as development as far north as Orlando dumps more nutrients into a lake already bursting with them.

"We can't go back to the way things were in the 1800s," when water flowed out of the lake and into the Everglades, she said.

"We have to fix the system," she said. "And that's really hard."

This is correct. Yet it also suggests a lack of urgency.

Were birds or other animals dropping dead en masse, the pressure to do something now would be impossible to resist. When it's dead sea life, though, there seems to be a sense it isn't such a big deal.

No matter how many fish, dolphins or sea turtles wash up dead, it's not enough to compel immediate action. Whatever this fouled water is doing to human health is immaterial compared to the Corps' mandate to protect human health via flood control.

This system is not merely broken. It makes no sense.

And the idea that we just need to wait several more years until something is done doesn't wash. At least not as long as lake water continues to feed toxic algae blooms and kill fish — and endanger those of us this system was supposed to protect.