ST. CLOUD -- Everglades marshes and Big Cypress swamps are drying up. Estuaries at the mouths of the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers are turning too salty. Lake Okeechobee, brimming from Tropical Storm Fay less than a year ago, is slipping into the low zone again.

If smoke wafting from Palmetto Bay brush fires didn't provide a clear enough signal that South Florida is once again in the grips of a dangerous dry spell, water managers on Wednesday waved lots of red flags.

With water levels dropping and most counties already on severe watering restrictions, the South Florida Water Management District governing board is facing tough decisions on how to ration a dwindling resource before the rainy season kicks in -- with any luck, sometime next month.

District Chairman Eric Buermann termed the worsening conditions ``very sobering.''

Representatives from Lee County, led by its commission Chairman Ray Judah, appealed to the board to continue releases from Lake Okeechobee down the Caloosahatchee to protect drinking water supplies and a rich Pine Island Sound fishery that is a major tourist draw.

The board made no decision, but district engineers warned that helping one side of the state, in this case the parched southwest coast, could raise risks of damaging ripple effects affecting farmers and other cities that rely on the lake's water. The lake was at 11.93 feet above sea level Wednesday, a foot and a half above last year's drought-driven low but more than two feet below normal.

Heavy rains in the middle and at the end of March kept canal and groundwater levels in coastal Miami-Dade and Broward counties in decent shape, but levels are falling across much of the rest of the region.

March produced only 1.39 inches of rain, less than half of the average -- and it was actually wetter than most months this winter. Overall, the region has received less than 30 percent of its normal rainfall.

''If we don't get an inch of rain in the next three weeks, this will be the driest dry season on record,'' said Matahel Ansar, the district's deputy operations manager.

Water has dropped below ground level in the Everglades from the park on up north of Alligator Alley in Broward County.

Meanwhile, the Water Management District's board, meeting at the northern end of its 16-county area, deferred discussions on whether to endorse Gov. Charlie Crist's downsized $533 million land deal with U.S. Sugar until Thursday.

Mike Collins, a board member who has been the most vocal critic of the U.S. Sugar deal, said the drought shows why the district would be better served building more reservoirs than buying more land.

Water managers say the region lucked out last year when Tropical Storm Fay dumped 20 inches north of Lake Okeechobee, erasing the last long and damaging drought in a few days.

''That's all we have between us and disaster,'' Collins said.