A small city in the high desert of central Oregon takes advantage of an unusual geological feature to make its water supply more resilient.
Prineville, a city of 11,000 along the Crooked River, uses a confined aquifer deep underground that was an ancestral channel of the river. This channel was blocked by volcanic activity millions of years ago, but it still has characteristics of a riverbed, including rounded river rocks and gravel.
“It’s like a huge bathtub,” says Eric Klann, city engineer and public works director. “It’s not like a big cavern; it has gravels, and gravels leave a lot of areas that you can
