Droughts Are Getting Worse. Is Fog-Farming a Fix?

The economics are tricky, too. Water remains very cheap in places with modern infrastructure, disincentivizing fog collection, said Daniel Fernandez, an environmental scientist at California State University, Monterey Bay who studies the technology but wasn’t involved in the new paper. “They’re going to catch a few gallons, if you’re lucky, in a day,” said Fernandez, who also founded a company that installs collectors. “That’s kind of cool to get that much from fog. But how much is that going to cost you to turn on your tap and get that much?” 

The investment is more enticing where water is scarcer and therefore more expensive, Fernandez said. As climate change makes droughts more intense, communities struggling to get enough water might find the economics make sense. Supplementing aquifers, reservoirs, and other established sources with fog would help a region diversify its water system, in case one of them dries up or gets contaminated. Alto Hospicio can’t just rely on its aquifers, since they’re no longer being replenished by rain. “Without thinking outside the box, including fog harvesting, that solution places a limit on how long human habitation can exist there,” said Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, who wasn’t involved in the new paper.

Dense cities, though, may struggle to deploy fog collectors compared to the countryside. “The wind load on a fog collector is like that on the sail of a sailing ship,” said Robert S. Schemenauer, executive director of FogQuest, a Canadian nonprofit that advises on collection projects. “It has to be very strongly anchored. Therefore, placing it on the building could lead to building damage or material ending up on the street below.”

Beyond drinking water, using the fog for hydroponic farming could help Alto Hospicio and other parched communities grow their own food. Gamberini is already doing additional research elsewhere in the Atacama to expand this kind of farming, growing tomatoes, lettuce, and other crops with fog water and bountiful desert sunlight.

Even in the United States, where water is comparatively cheap, gardeners are experimenting with fog collectors. Peter Weiss, an atmospheric chemist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been installing them in Pacifica, just south of San Francisco. In the summertime, fog can provide enough water to sustain a home’s established plants without turning on the hose. 

For Weiss’ next project, he wants to bring fog collection to California’s vineyards. “That could be a way to make it more sustainable, less water intensive,” he said. “At first I hated fog because it’s so dreary. But then I started collecting it, and I loved it.”

Matt Simon is a senior staff writer at Grist. This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.