The Crooked River Pump Station is located at the base of a 125-ft canyon near Smith Rock in Terrebonne, OR. Constructed in the 1960’s as the District's first drought resilience strategy, the pump station contains 9 450-horsepower pumps, which were originally used as cooling pumps for the 1940’s Manhattan project. Though old, the pumps have proven to remain impressively efficient; multiple energy efficiency assessments have endorsed their usage today. The station was retrofitted with a control system that monitors Crooked River flow and will automatically turn off pumps based on the state-required minimum flowrate within the river. Chief among these retrofits (in addition to a full suite of industrial automation and control SCADA) was the installation of a Variable Frequency Drive on pump#3. 

The VFD allows pump#3 to fluctuate its flow intake between 5 to 15 cfs in order to match the highly variable flow rate within the Crooked River, supporting the demands of efficient agricultural water management and the improvement of quality habitat for fish and wildlife.