The small fishing village of Caleta Chungungo lies about 450 kilometers north of Santiago in an arid climate zone. This part of Chile, known as Norte Chico, is located between the extremely arid northern desert and the more moderate Mediterranean climate of central Chile.
For several decades Caleta Chungungo was supplied with fresh water from a nearby iron mine. After the mine closed the village depended on tank trucks for a limited supply of poor quality fresh water. The people of Caleta Chungungo lived with a chronic water shortage for about twenty years.
In 1987 a fog collecting system was installed on the slopes of the coastal mountains near the abandoned iron mine at El Tofo. The system consists of large nets arrayed across the slopes perpendicular to the landward flow of the camanchaca. The fog condenses on the mesh and the water drips into a trough. The collected water flows from the trough down through a pipe to a reservoir near Caleta Chungungo, about four miles away.
The concept of harvesting water from the camanchaca came from local observation of condensation on the leaves of eucalyptus trees growing near El Tofo. Today Caleta Chungungo has a reliable supply of potable water, and enough water to irrigate small vegetable gardens. This successful grass-roots innovation has spread to other dryland regions with similar physical geography, such as Peru, Ecuador, and beyond South America in Oman, a mountainous country on the Arabian Sea.
Photo credit (except Space Shuttle photo): P. Cerceda and J. Betancourt
