Charles Barnes writes,

The front page story of the November 18 Post Register had the title “Thirsty Idaho” and the subtitle, “Study: Idahoans use the most water.” The USGS report that the article is based on is available at http://water.usgs.gov/watuse/. As stated in the article, the average water used use per person in Idaho for domestic purposes is 168 gal/day, higher than any other state in the nation. The article compared Idaho’s high use to some nearby states but did not mention that right behind Idaho in domestic water usage is Utah at 167 gal/day. Praise God that we have an abundance of fresh, clean water.

This number of 168 gallons per day per person is only about 1.5% of the total water used in the state. The two major uses in Idaho are for irrigation and aquaculture. Idaho is second in the nation (behind California) in the amount of water used in irrigation and leads the nation, by a wide margin over second-place California, in aquaculture. Praise God for the potatoes and other crops that are grown in our state because of the availability of water for agriculture and aquaculture.

Domestic water use varies widely from county to county. The per capita use of publicly supplied domestic water in Bonneville County is 238 gal/day. This compares to a low of 50 gal/day in Benewah County and a high of 525 gal/day in Custer County. Nearly 626 million gallons of water per day are used for irrigation in Bonneville County; the whole state uses 14 billion gallons per day for irrigation. Fifty-six million gallons of water per day are used in Bonneville County for aquaculture, a mere 2% of the total used in the state for this purpose.

In Scripture water is one of the symbols of the Holy Spirit. If God can supply these vast amounts of water, the water we need to live and that we use to produce the crops grown in our state, how much more can He supply His Holy Spirit to empower us to live an abundant life, to bring about His harvest and produce fruit that glorifies Him.