All this over 2 feet of water.

As those involved in the fight for cleaner water know, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is mulling a proposal by U.S. Rep. Brian Mast — and backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis — to reduce the water level in Lake Okeechobee during the dry months to obviate the need for discharges during our wet summers.

The Corps, which managed the dike around the lake, now shoots for 12 feet, 6 inches by June 1. Mast and DeSantis — and a good chunk of the audience that thronged meetings on the subject in Stuart Tuesday — want the Corps to aim for 10 feet, 6 inches.

For the lake and the communities around it, this could have some consequences.

I wasn't aware that one of them was the end of the world.

More:Martin County residents to Army Corps: Lake Okeechobee discharges a public health disaster

More: Glades officials rip 'fake' environmentalists

Many in the Glades communities are fighting this proposal tooth and nail. To some, the whole thing is the work of "fake" environmentalists and "coastal elites" whose real goal isn't to stop the discharges but to blow up the dike, flood the farm fields, restore the "River of Grass" to its former glory and punish all who live south of the lake.

I'm not making any of this up. It's only a slight paraphrasing of what Janet Taylor, a former Hendry County Commissioner who founded Glades Lives Matter, told a packed house in Clewiston last week, as reported by my colleagues at the Fort Myers News-Press.

In Stuart on Tuesday she struck a more conciliatory tone — playing to her audience, I guess — extending an olive branch and insisting she wanted solutions that were good for everyone.

If such a thing existed, don't you think we would have found it by now?

The Corps was in Clewiston for the same reason it came to Stuart, to gauge public support — or lack thereof — for reducing the lake level.

More: Lake O-area residents urge Corps to look beyond coastal concerns

In Clewiston the overriding sentiment was that the corps should look beyond coastal concerns when managing the lake.

As Pastor Steve Nolan, president of the Belle Glade Chamber of Commerce, put it: "The people and the lives of the people (around the lake) should be paramount (and) they should be the first thing that’s considered … Lake levels are everyone’s concern. The integrity of the dike is everybody’s concern — especially to us that live around the lake. That concern should not be driven by algae, red tide, water discharges that you and I have absolutely no control over."

The next day, Feb. 12, former Pahokee Mayor J.P. Sasser was in Stuart to rip the "fake environmental groups" — including Bullsugar and the Everglades Foundation — who, in his view, mislead people into thinking all coastal water problems originate with the discharges. The reality, said Sasser, is that locals are responsible for plenty of the pollution — via agricultural runoff into the canals or septic tanks or what have you.

Sasser made some valid points, noting that taking the lake down to Mast's preferred elevation could result in problems in the event of a drought. It could choke off the water supply used to irrigate sugarcane and vegetables in the Everglades Agricultural Area and drinking water to the municipalities and native reservations south of the lake.

This is why a measured, reasoned debate on lake levels is necessary.

Yes, lowering the lake levels could impact the ecology of the lake. It could affect water supply and navigation.

Yet how do these concerns outweigh the fact that algae from the lake has closed our beaches, shuttered businesses, killed dogs and done God knows what to human health?

How is it this shouldn't be prioritized?

Are we going to have shared adversity or not?

That's a key question. For we "coastal elites" have shouldered the burden for decades.

It is we who have watched our estuary damaged over and over, we who have had to live at the end of what amounts to a sewer pipe.

But what I heard out of that Clewiston meeting — and then Tuesday, in Stuart — was that taking the lake down to Mast's preferred elevation could cause adversity.

And lake-area residents and businesses aren't interested in sharing any of it.

To be fair, that's not how they framed it — but that was indeed what they were saying.

Yes, it would be wonderful if some magic pixie dust solution existed whereby we could all get everything we wanted without having to sacrifice a thing. It doesn't. So now what?

Either we have shared adversity or we don't. And if we don't, that means those along the coast will have no choice but to endure more discharges, more algae, more problems.

For after all, Glades lives matter. And they absolutely do.

Ours, apparently, don’t.

Gil Smart is a TCPalm columnist and a member of the Editorial Board. His columns reflect his opinion. Readers may reach him at gil.smart@tcpalm.com, by phone at 772-223-4741 or via Twitter at @TCPalmGilSmart.