Klamath Basin farmers would get nearly a full supply of irrigation water through the next decade under a proposal unveiled Monday by the Bush administration, but they could voluntarily sell water back to the government through a "water bank" set up to help protected fish.

The draft U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plan gives farmers a leg up in the heated contest for water in the arid basin. But top officials cautioned Monday that it is merely a first step toward divvying water among farmers, wildlife and tribes in coming years.

"What it means is the Department of Interior is working as hard as it can to deliver water to farmers, while also meeting our obligations to the tribes" and the Endangered Species Act, said Bennett Raley, assistant secretary of interior. "We're doing everything we can, but we're going to follow the law."

Because the plan -- called a biological assessment -- admits that diverting water to farms probably would harm endangered suckers in Upper Klamath Lake and threatened coho salmon in the Klamath River, it faces review by federal biologists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service.

Biologists found in a similar review last year that the imperiled fish needed more water to make it through last summer's drought. That prompted severe cutbacks in irrigation deliveries and an emotional summer of protests in the Klamath Basin.

But the mountains ringing the basin hold far more snow now than they did last year, and the Bush administration has had a full year to review its options for calming the Klamath Basin's water struggles.

Farmers had hoped the administration would find room to provide reliable irrigation water even with the demands of the Endangered Species Act. They were among many interests in the basin briefed Monday in Klamath Falls by Raley and Reclamation Commissioner John Keys.

"It seems like they have spent a long time on this, so we are hopeful it will be workable," said Dan Keppen of the Klamath Water Users Association. "We just don't want to see a repeat of last year -- that's the bottom line."

Turning back the clock But while farmers greeted the plan warmly, Klamath Basin tribes and conservation groups complained that it turns back the clock. By giving farms first priority for water, they said, the plan embraces the same strategy that led to the decline of waterfowl and the now-endangered fish that Native Americans once depended on for food.

Buying some water back from farmers through the proposed "water bank" will not restore an ecosystem beset by declining water quality, they said.

"In many ways, this proposal is more openly anti-tribal and anti-environmental than previous Reclamation policies," said Allen Foreman, chairman of the Klamath Tribe. "The new program actually has the nerve to propose that for tribal water to stay in Upper Klamath Lake to protect tribal fisheries, the U.S. government would have to buy it from Klamath irrigators."

They said the proposal clearly signals the intention of the Bush administration to satisfy the needs of farmers before fulfilling the demands of the Endangered Species Act.

"They're basically acknowledging that their plan does not meet the needs of fish," said Reed Benson, executive director of WaterWatch of Oregon. "But I think they've decided they want to be on the side of farmers, and if the fish don't get what they need, that's the fishes' problem."

WaterWatch was among an alliance of conservation and fishermen's groups that said last week they would sue if federal agencies fail to draw up a Klamath water plan that protected fish.

Based on peak years The plan released Monday proposes to provide water to farmers at the same level as federal water managers did from 1961 to 1997, the years when the Klamath Reclamation Project reached its peak water deliveries.

Doing so would drop Upper Klamath Lake during the summer, putting it as much as 3 feet below the levels biologists have mandated for fish and below its historic levels, the plan says. That would leave less habitat for suckers and would lead to warmer and shallower water, making algae-caused fish kills more common and damaging, it says. Sending water to farms also would harm coho salmon by leaving less habitat for young fish downstream in the Klamath River, the plan says.

It offers a series of suggestions for reducing the harm to fish that could be adopted into a final operations plan for the basin's intricate network of dams and canals. They include leasing water from willing farmers to devote to fish needs; encouraging farmers to irrigate more in winter to reduce the needs of crops during the basin's dry summers; and installing long-proposed fish screens to keep protected fish from getting sucked into irrigation canals.

It also proposes pursuing restoration of wetlands that naturally filter water entering the region's lakes and rivers.

Some had hoped the Bush administration would advance a broader plan to bring the many demands for water in the basin more in line with the limited amount available, especially in drought years.

Senators' reactions Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., was still reviewing the proposal Monday. Rep Greg Walden, R-Ore., who has joined Smith to advocate relief for the basin's farmers, said the 10-year span of the new plan should give federal agencies more flexibility in managing water.

A spokesman for Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said the senator would continue pushing a five-year, $175 million plan to create a Klamath Basin task force that would address the basin's problems.

"I'm not sure that anybody is going to be happy about this assessment," said Josh Kardon, Wyden's chief of staff. "The farmers get government handouts instead of certainty; the tribes and the environmentalists may feel like an afterthought."

The biological assessment was scheduled be available today on the Web at www.doi.gov.

You can reach Michael Milstein at 503-294-7689 or by e-mail at michaelmilstein@news.oregonian.com.