Columbia Basin Project were built at the north and south ends of Grand Coulee, the dry canyon south of Grand Coulee Dam, allowing the coulee to be filled with water pumped up from the Columbia River. The resulting reservoir, called Banks Lake, is about long. Banks Lake serves as the CBP's initial storage reservoir. Additional canals, siphons, and reservoirs were built south of Bank Lake, reaching over . Water is lifted from Lake Roosevelt to feed the massive network. The total amount of the Columbia flow that is diverted into the CBP at Grand Coulee varies a little from year to year, and
Coulee Coulee </div> Coulee, or coulée ( or ) is a term applied rather loosely to different landforms, all of which refer to a kind of valley or drainage zone. The word "coulee" comes from the Canadian French "coulée", from the French word "couler" meaning "to flow". The term is often used interchangeably in the Great Plains for any number of water features, from ponds to creeks. In southern Louisiana the word "coulée" (also spelled "coolie") originally meant a gully or ravine usually dry or intermittent but becoming sizable during rainy weather. As stream channels were dredged or canalized, the term