---
title: the crooked already has a meadow and a wellfield
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/what-the-crooked-river-depends-on
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/what-the-crooked-river-depends-on.md
subtitle: "prineville drinks a river, a basalt aquifer, and a creek that still goes dry"
category: ecosystem-services
---

# the crooked already has a meadow and a wellfield

*prineville drinks a river, a basalt aquifer, and a creek that still goes dry*

If you have ever stood on the rimrock above Prineville in August, you know the picture. Juniper and sage down the slope, hay fields green where the ditches reach and tan where they stop, and the Crooked River sliding along the north edge of town under a sky with nothing in it. The map name for that view is the Lower Crooked, hydrologic unit 17070305, inside the Deschutes. The map is correct. It is not the answer.

The answer is three pieces of living ground and the order they were worked on. A wet meadow up in the Ochoco National Forest. A basalt aquifer under the town. Six miles of a creek that still goes dry every irrigation season. Two of the three have already been paid for by people who drink from this river. The third is the reason this series exists.

## the crooked river watershed, in three pieces

The **Crooked River watershed** at Prineville is a river, the ground that stores water for it, and the tributaries that feed it. The Lower Crooked (HUC 17070305) sits inside the Deschutes basin (HUC 170703) in Crook County, Oregon. Prineville is the town on it: 10,736 people at the April 2020 census, 11,994 by the July 2025 estimate. Small enough that one hot week shows up at the tap.

For what follows, three parts of the watershed matter more than the rest.

| stock | where | what it does for the river | status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ingram Meadow | Auger Creek, Ochoco National Forest, about 15 acres | Holds snowmelt in the headwaters and lets it go slowly | Restored 2019 |
| Basalt aquifer | Under Prineville | Takes winter water, gives it back on the hottest days | Wells injecting since 2021 |
| McKay Creek | Tributary into the Crooked at Prineville, about six miles | Carries water to the river for steelhead | Still dries each irrigation season |

That order is not an accident. The Crooked reaches Lake Billy Chinook, on the Pelton Round Butte project co-owned by Portland General Electric and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. They are downstream sovereigns on this water. They are not a buyer in this series. Meadow, wells, creek. Hold on to it. The creek is where this ends up, and there is a reason it came last.

## the meadow came first

Drive up into the Ochocos northwest of town and the juniper gives way to pine. Somewhere up Auger Creek there is a meadow about 15 acres across that spent decades draining itself. A channel had cut down through it, the water table dropped with the channel, and ground that should have stayed wet into July was letting its water go in May.

In 2019 the Forest Service and its partners finished a plug-and-pond job on Ingram Meadow: wood, rock, and soil set into the cut so water spreads back across the meadow instead of racing out of it. LimnoTech, the firm that prepares Meta's volumetric water report, counts the result as 1.5 million gallons a year of added storage, with the benefit running through 2029.

That number is small next to what comes below. It is also the only one of the three that is a living thing fixed by hand. The meadow is federal land. It is not a parcel anybody can buy. It is a sponge in the headwaters that sends its water downhill slowly, toward the river, toward the town.

## the wells have been running since 2021

Come back down into Prineville. Under the town is basalt, and basalt holds water.

The City of Prineville pumps water near the Crooked River in winter, when the river has it to spare and the town is using little, and injects it into that rock. In summer, on the days when the town is using the most, the city draws it back out. That is the whole idea. The method has its own guide if you want the plumbing: [managed aquifer recharge](/guide/managed-aquifer-recharge?from=guide).

Apple paid for the first well. The city's own release puts the grant at $8.7 million. Meta put money into the same first phase, and the city runs the system: monitors it, maintains it, answers for it when a resident calls. Phase I has been injecting since 2021. LimnoTech attributes 30.3 million gallons a year of recharge to Meta's cost share, counted through 2030.

Add the meadow and the wells and you get the figure in the Columbia River chapter of the 2024 report: 31.8 million gallons. That is the whole counted Crooked River benefit for 2024. Not 31.8 million gallons sitting in the aquifer; the gallons one funder's accountant can attribute to that funder's share of two projects, in one year. A second phase of wells is anticipated at 150 million gallons a year. In the August 2025 report it still sits in the appendix of projects not yet producing a benefit. A plan, not a result.

## six miles of mckay creek still go dry

Now the piece that is not done.

McKay Creek comes down out of the Ochocos and into the Crooked at Prineville. If you searched that name and found a dam near Pendleton, you found the other McKay. That one is on the Umatilla. This one is here.

Every irrigation season, about six miles of McKay Creek are drawn down until they go dry. Water that would reach the Crooked is spread on fields instead. The fields belong to people, and the people have a district. **Ochoco Irrigation District** serves about 20,062 acres and 898 irrigators, and it operates Ochoco Reservoir and Prineville Reservoir.

The exchange on the table is simple to say. Irrigators on McKay take stored water from Prineville Reservoir instead of the creek, and their creek rights stay in the creek. The creek runs through the summer. The reason the report gives for wanting it to run is steelhead.

LimnoTech lists about 35 million gallons a year as anticipated from the McKay exchange. It is not in the 2024 count. The pipe, the pump, the paperwork, and the water right have to line up first. That is the work not yet done.

## both directions

A watershed post usually asks one question: what does the river need? The Crooked at Prineville makes you ask it twice, because the dependency runs both ways.

The town depends on the river's winter. Every gallon in the basalt was in the Crooked first, in the cold months when nobody noticed. In March 2026 the city's public-works lead said the three data centers in town use about 10 percent of the water used in Prineville. In May 2024 the Bulletin had put that share on the peak days, about the ten hottest of the year. Both sentences are true as spoken. They measure different days, and the wells were built for the second kind.

The creek's people depend on the river's summer. The 898 irrigators depend on stored water being there in July. Steelhead depend on McKay Creek carrying water to the Crooked in the same month. Right now those two needs collide on six miles of creek, and the creek loses. The exchange is the first design that lets both win, and it is the one piece of the three with no gallons on the 2024 ledger.

:::johnson
**the crooked river already has the meadow and the wells. the creek is the piece still ahead.**
Two of three living stocks have been funded by people who drink from this river. The third has a design, a district, and a fish waiting on it.

[see the rivers and lakes agent →](/rivers-lakes.ensurance?from=guide)
:::

## what is already working, and the gap

Count the institutions in a town of twelve thousand. The Forest Service holds the meadow. The City of Prineville runs the wells, and Apple and Meta paid for them. Ochoco Irrigation District is the counterparty that can make the creek exchange real. An engineering firm counts, year by year, what each project gives the river. That architecture exists, and nothing here replaces it.

Here is the gap. Each piece was paid for by one payer at a time, as a construction gift or a cost share. The report that counts the gallons belongs to one funder. The river belongs to everyone on it: the ratepayer filling a kettle, the grower on a McKay ditch, the campus on the municipal tap, the fish in the lower creek. None of them can hold a share of the river's condition beside the report.

This is where **ensurance** comes in, and only here, after the river is clear. Ensurance is how the people who depend on a living system fund its condition before it fails, and hold that funding in common instead of one check at a time ([the shared version of that idea](/guide/you-dont-have-to-shoulder-it-alone?from=guide) has its own post). The rivers and lakes agent is [`rivers-lakes.ensurance`](/rivers-lakes.ensurance?from=guide). A `crooked river` line under it is a candidate, in ideation and not minted. The fifth post in this series is where it gets spelled out, with the people who already pay and the door to help shape it.

What that line would fund is the upkeep of the meadow, the monitoring of the wells, and the creek exchange. What it would not be is the meadow, the aquifer, or the creek. Those exist with or without anyone holding anything. Ensurance funds the river. It is not the river.

## frequently asked questions

### what is the crooked river watershed?

The Crooked River watershed is the land that drains to the Crooked River in central Oregon. The Lower Crooked subbasin is hydrologic unit 17070305, inside the Deschutes basin (170703). Prineville, in Crook County, is the main town on it. For water purposes, the three pieces that matter most at Prineville are Ingram Meadow in the Ochoco National Forest, the basalt aquifer under the town, and McKay Creek.

### does prineville drink from the crooked river?

Yes, with a step in between. The City of Prineville pumps water near the Crooked in winter, injects it into a basalt aquifer under town, and recovers it in summer. Apple funded the first well with a grant the city put at $8.7 million; Meta shares the cost of the first phase; the city operates the wells, which have been injecting since 2021.

### is mckay creek the same as mckay dam?

No. McKay Creek in this series is a tributary that enters the Crooked River at Prineville. About six miles of it go dry each irrigation season. McKay Dam is on McKay Creek near Pendleton, in the Umatilla basin. Same name, different river, different county.

### how much water do prineville's data centers use?

Two statements are on the record and they are not the same. In March 2026 the city's public-works lead said the three data centers in town use about 10 percent of the water used in Prineville. In May 2024 the Bulletin described that share as a peak-day figure, about the ten hottest days of the year. Read them together. Do not read either as an everyday average.

### what does 31.8 million gallons mean?

It is the benefit LimnoTech counted for the Crooked River in 2024: 1.5 million gallons from Ingram Meadow plus 30.3 million from the first phase of the wells, scaled to Meta's share of the cost. It does not include the second phase of wells or the McKay Creek exchange. Those are anticipated, not counted.

## what comes next

Read the next two posts: who depends on this river, then the creek itself. If the Crooked is not your river, pick one that is at [explore](/explore?from=guide). The pattern, a meadow fixed, wells running, a creek still open, is not unique to Prineville. The names are.

## sources

[LimnoTech, Volumetric Water Benefits: 2024 Report, prepared for Meta, August 2025](https://sustainability.atmeta.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/REVISED_FINAL_Meta_2024_Volumetric_Water_Benefit_Report_08.21.2025.pdf) — Ingram Meadow (15 acres, 1.5 million gallons a year through 2029), Prineville aquifer wells Phase I (30.3 million gallons a year attributed to Meta's cost share through 2030), the 31.8 million gallon 2024 Columbia River figure, Phase II (150 million anticipated), and the McKay Creek exchange (six miles, about 35 million anticipated, for steelhead).

[City of Prineville press release on the Apple partnership, 2018](https://www.meadowlakesgc.com/sites/default/files/fileattachments/city_administration/page/12381/press_release_-_prineville_apple_002.pdf) — the $8.7 million Apple grant for the first aquifer well.

[KTVZ, 5 March 2026, "Tech investment in state-of-the-art water system could reshape Prineville's economy"](https://ktvz.com/news/problem-solvers/2026/03/05/problem-solvers-tech-investment-in-state-of-the-art-water-system-could-reshape-prinevilles-economy/) — the public-works lead's remark that the three data centers use about 10 percent of the water used in Prineville.

[Bend Bulletin, 9 May 2024, "Prineville doubles down on water conservation with tech giant-backed project"](https://bendbulletin.com/2024/05/09/prineville-doubles-down-on-water-conservation-with-tech-giant-backed-project/) — the peak-day reading of that share, about the ten hottest days.

[U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts, Prineville city, Oregon](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/prinevillecityoregon) — population 10,736 (1 April 2020) and 11,994 (1 July 2025 estimate).

[Ochoco Irrigation District, water right and operations](https://ochocoid.org/operations/water-right/) — about 20,062 acres served and 898 irrigators; operator of Ochoco and Prineville Reservoir.

## the series

1. the crooked already has a meadow and a wellfield (this post)
2. [who depends on the crooked river](/guide/who-depends-on-the-crooked-river?from=guide)
3. [six miles of mckay creek still go dry](/guide/mckay-creek-still-goes-dry?from=guide)
4. [the ten hottest days in prineville](/guide/the-ten-hottest-days-in-prineville?from=guide)
5. [apple and the city already paid for the well](/guide/who-already-pays-for-the-crooked-river?from=guide)