Columbia River
The Columbia drains an area of about . Its drainage basin covers nearly all of Idaho, large portions of British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington, ultimately all of Montana west of the Continental Divide, and small portions of Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada; the total area is similar to the size of France. Roughly of the river's length and 85 percent of its drainage basin are in the US. The Columbia is the twelfth-longest river and has the sixth-largest drainage basin in the United States. In Canada, where the Columbia flows for and drains , the river ranks 23rd in length, and the Canadian part of its basin ranks 13th in size among Canadian basins. 
The Columbia shares its name with nearby places, such as British Columbia, as well as with landforms and bodies of water.
Okanagan Basin Water Board
Water is one of the most precious and important natural assets in the Okanagan Basin. Even though the Basin is endowed with several large lakes, the supply of clean, reliable water is inherently limited by the semi-arid to arid climate, which brings minimal precipitation and high evaporation and evapotranspiration rates. In fact, according to Statistics Canada the Okanagan Basin has the lowest, per capita availability of fresh water in Canada. Water shortages have already occurred in some areas of the Basin, and are expected to occur more widely and frequently in the future.