The feisty fog-catchers of Chile
When there is not enough rain, Chileans catch water in nets
Jun 14th 2018 | COQUIMBO
IN THE school playground in Los Tomes a lone child, José Ossandón, plays with his
emboque, a ball-and-cup game. The eight-year-old is the schools only pupil. His teacher, Nilda Jimena Gallardo, herself a former pupil, says that enrolment has dropped from 65 when she started teaching 43 years ago. Drought has driven families away, she says. Only the old remain.
Los Tomes is an agricultural co-operative, one of 178 in Chiles Coquimbo region. Nineteen
comuneros try to grow wheat and raise sheep and goats on 2,800 hectares (7,000 acres) of semi-arid scrubland. A decade-long drought has made that harder. Hilltop springs where the animals once drank have dried up. As herds shrank and yields fell, farmers children moved away to take jobs in cities or at copper mines.
Hope for Los Tomes comes in the form of three 60-square-metre (646-square-foot) nets stretched between poles on a ridge above the community. These
atrapanieblas capture droplets from the fog that rolls in from the sea 4km (2.5 miles) away. They trickle down to a pipe, which channels the water to two troughs at the foot of the ridge, from which livestock drink. The banner-like nets can harvest 650 litres (140 gallons) of water a day. Were content: its produced the results we wanted, says José Ossandón, the childs father and the president of the co-operative.
Chile has been investigating fog capture since the 1950s. The dense fog that arises from the Humboldt current, called the
camanchaca, can be harvested with the help of a coastal mountain range and strong winds. Earlier attempts to turn the mist into usable water failed. In 1990 fog nets at Chungungo, a fishing village north of Los Tomes, captured 8,000 litres a day. Villagers argued about how to share responsibility for maintaining the
atrapanieblas.
More:
https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2018/06/16/the-feisty-fog-catchers-of-chile