Californians are all in the same soot

We’re skimming across flat water on blue Lake Tahoe, ringed by granite peaks still capped with winter snow. But a mile offshore we can’t see squat.

It’s like being socked in by fog on Santa Monica Bay. Only this stuff won’t be burning off by noon. Better have a compass on board; preferably a GPS.

The crud is wood smoke from a few hundred Northern California wildfires. The unhealthy haze has been carried by prevailing south-westerlies up over the Sierra summit and now fills the Tahoe Basin.

People are leaving their boats on buoys. There’s little clamoring for view tables at lakeside restaurants, especially outside on deck. The sweet scent of pine has been overcome by the stench of smoke.

And hikers beware: These aren’t optimum conditions for strenuous ascents in the thin -- now dirty -- alpine air.

It seems surreal. There isn’t a wildfire within 60 miles of Lake Tahoe. Most are hundreds of miles away. But up here we’re still victims, if minor ones.

This rude act of nature is an unmistakable metaphor for an increasingly stark fact of California life: We’re all connected, regardless of where we live. We’re all in the same soup -- in this case, the same soot.

(Nod to the Lake Tahoe visitors bureau: Yes, the smoke blanket I describe was last week’s. Since then the air has been clearing. “A lot of people are worried about the media coverage,” says Julie Regan of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. “We’re open for business.”)

Typically after I write about a natural disaster, e-mails pour in from cranky Californians who assert that anyone who builds in harm’s way -- in the woods, along the seashore, on a slide-prone cliff, in a flood plain, on a quake fault -- gets what they deserve when calamity strikes. But that covers just about all of us.

No Californian should be smug. A major quake can occur practically anywhere, except -- knock on wood -- the Sacramento Valley. But flooding is a given in the Sacramento Valley and along the North Coast. Mudslides are a fact of coastal life in Southern California. And fires are everywhere that pines, manzanita and housing developments sprout.

Last week, virtually everyone from Big Sur to the Oregon and Nevada borders was breathing bad air from the estimated 1,450 wildfires, most of them ignited by lightning.

All Californians pay -- and not just with clogged lungs -- when any disaster hits. If not with personal loss, we at least pay through the pocketbook.

Fighting wildfires during the last fiscal year, which ended Monday, cost state taxpayers $393 million, the governor’s office estimated Wednesday. That’s $308 million over what was budgeted for all emergencies. The year before, the firefighting tab was $206 million.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed raising $69 million annually by adding a disaster fee to property insurance premiums. The hit would average about $12.60 per household in “high-hazard” zones -- almost everywhere -- and $6.75 in “low-hazard” areas. This makes sense, but Republicans call the fee a tax and are opposed.

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At Tahoe, last week’s smoky skies appeared obnoxiously on the one-year anniversary of a wildfire -- ignited by an illegal campfire -- that destroyed 254 homes and other structures on the south shore. Total damage was estimated at $160 million.

Today, the 3,100 charred acres are a mixture of dead-pine matchsticks and moonscape. But there are hopeful signs of sprouting new homes.

Since that disaster, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency has made it easier for homeowners to knock down pines that can fuel fires. There’s public money for partial rebates.

There should be better land-use planning and more fire prevention all over California -- something more acceptable and effective than dousing neighborhood fireworks on the Fourth of July, as Schwarzenegger advocates.

Actually, planning and prevention are improving. And they’re costly.

Water is another especially clear example of Californians all swimming in the same soup.

For decades, northern environmentalists have objected to sending water south to fill L.A. swimming pools and quench developers’ thirst for more housing tracts. No more dams, they insist. But they ignore that dams also protect northerners from the floods that invariably threaten after every drought cycle and are expected to worsen with global warming.

Farmers fret about fish gobbling Delta water that they believe should fill their irrigation ditches. But when fish don’t get enough fresh water -- and they haven’t been in recent years -- federal judges step in and tighten the farmers’ spigots. Farms and fishing both have suffered.

Updating California’s water facilities will demand creative compromise. And so far Capitol politicians have proven themselves incapable of it. Schwarzenegger still hopes the Legislature will agree to a water bond for the November ballot, perhaps as part of budget bargaining.

Healthcare is another instance of all Californians being in it together. Many complain that any universal healthcare should exclude illegal immigrants. But we’re paying for their care anyway, only at much steeper rates in hospital emergency rooms, where the Supreme Court says they can’t be turned away. And that’s fortunate, because the sick spread disease to other people, regardless of status.

Schwarzenegger intends to take another run at healthcare reform after the Legislature ends its budget squabbling.

Go down the list of problems in a growing state with finite land and resources. Californians say they want it all -- guaranteed healthcare, reliable water, quality education, tough sentencing for bad guys, fire suppression. But polls show they don’t want to pay for it themselves. Somebody else should.

Californians are in a dense haze about what to do -- another metaphor provided by the smoky skies.

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george.skelton@latimes.com