POST FALLS - North Idaho has a lot of clean freshwater - both above and below ground. Still, wasting it is inexcusable.

The U.S. Department of Interior's Bureau of Reclamation is installing multiple weather stations in North Idaho that can help people who water lawns, fields and crops avoid waste.

On Tuesday afternoon, in a field next to the Post Falls wastewater treatment plant, an "AgriMet" weather station was installed. Another had been installed in Liberty Lake hours earlier.

Others will be installed this week in Coeur d'Alene - at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds - and in Spirit Lake. Stations operate already in Rathdrum, at Silverwood Theme Park, and in Deer Park, Wash.

"We tried to capture representative micro-climates throughout the area," said Jama Hamel, AgriMet program coordinator for the bureau and a civil engineer and hydrogeologist.

AgriMet is a combination of the words "Agriculture" and "Meteorology," and the stations monitor air temperature, wind, precipitation, solar radiation and humidity. Cellphone technology transports the data every hour to the bureau.

Hamel said a variety of people will use the data.

"Generally people who use our data save 15 to 20 percent on water," Hamel said.

The stations each cost approximately $9,000, and they require $1,600 per year in maintenance.

Data from the stations will be used to model "evapotranspiration," or "ET," which is the amount of water consumed by crops and evaporated from the soil.

ET data can provide irrigators or someone watering a ball field or lawn the information they need to apply the right amount of water at the right time.

Bob Flagor, administrator of the Kootenai-Shoshone Soil and Water Conservation District, said he would like to see incidents of wasted water - such as watering while it's raining - become a thing of the past. He loves the idea of more AgriMet stations being installed.

"Let's use scientific irrigation scheduling," Flagor said.

Fran Hughes, a member of the board of supervisors for the conservation district, said he farmed on the Rathdrum Prairie for 38 years.

"There are a lot of little micro-climates around the prairie," Hughes said. "We'll get a rain down here along the river that we don't get two miles away."

It's critical to time watering to weather data to save money and conserve water, he said.

"We got good, clean water; let's not waste it," Hughes said.

Approximately 100 AgriMet stations are now located in irrigated agricultural areas throughout the Pacific Northwest. Some have been in place for years.

All the information is accessible online at www.usbr.gov/pn/agrimet. There is also an irrigation scheduler cellphone app that provides access to the data. That smartphone tool originally was developed by Washington State University.