The ever-growing need for fresh water in both developing and developed countries is indisputable, and both increasing populations and the contamination of existing supplies will lead to constantly escalating demands. As a result, we need to start considering the use of nontraditional water supplies such as the collection of fog. As clouds move over hills and mountains, the hilltops and ridgelines are enveloped in fogs. Just as the leaves and needles of trees can collect some of the water in these fogs, large artificial collectors, made of polypropylene mesh, can produce a flow of potable water. This simple technology has its roots in antiquity.
Some commentators think so.
In our desert projects, we work in fog but there is no rain. Two thousand years ago, Pliny the Elder wrote about the Fountain Tree, or Holy Tree, on the island of El Hierro in the Canary Islands. From that time to at least 1800, the inhabitants obtained much of their water from fog that dripped from the leaves of one or more trees. Chungungo is a fishing village on the arid northern coast of Chile. In 1987, in the mountains a few kilometers inland, a project began to investigate the science and technology of fog collection.