Tanzania, New Project – November 2010

A new project to evaluate the fog collection potential in the central highlands of Tanzania, south of Arusha, is underway.

The lead on the project is our partner NGO in Germany, p(e)d-world. They have established formal contacts with a local NGO and with schools and villages in need of clean water. With guidance from FogQuest, the first small SFC was installed in October by Joachim Holst, a volunteer from Germany.

Initial results look promising and when more information is available an entry in the Current Projects section will be written.

Nepal visit – October 2010

Tony Makepeace, a long-serving director of FogQuest, was in Nepal in October to visit the Pathivara (Temple) site near Ilam in the east of the country and to start a new initiative in Katmandu. The two 40 m2 fog collectors at the temple have worked very well for a year and produce about 500 liters of water a day for the monks and visitors. Tony also works with another organization, NCDF, that supports Nepal and together we are working with a small sustainable development company,FoST, to see whether an affordable Medium Fog Collector can be built centrally for installation around Nepal.

A short video of this project can be seen here in the video section.

Tojquia, Guatemala, Fog Collection Project, August 2010

FogQuest volunteers Melissa Rosato (Canada) and Fernanda Rojas (Chile) were back in Tojquia in August to expand the village water project. There are now 35 Large Fog Collectors installed on a family by family basis. This is the largest fog collection project that is presently operating in the world. It produces an average of approximately 7000 liters of fog water per day, in the dry season. Assisting Melissa and Fernanda were 24 students and teachers from several countries. They were affiliated with the British based organization Round Square International Schools.

This continues the cooperation between RSIS and FogQuest and provides invaluable experience in development projects to the students while helping FogQuest carry out important construction and social tasks in the field. A brief report prepared by Melissa on the work in August is linked here:  Guatemala August 2010 Short Summary.

Conference July 2010

The 5th International Conference on Fog, Fog Collection and Dew was held in Muenster, Germany in late July. More information can be found here. Melissa Rosato gave a paper on the Tojquia water project (see here) that she co-authored with Fernanda Rojas and Robert Schemenauer. The title of the paper is:

Not just beneficiaries: fostering participation and local management capacity in the Tojquia fog-collection project, Guatemala.

The file is linked below:

Rosato, Rojas, Schemenauer 2010 Final Draft

Robert Schemenauer gave an invited overview paper on fog collection at the conference. This helped spur interest in careful comparisons of new materials that may be useful in future versions of fog collectors. FogQuest encourages such comparisons and can provide Raschel mesh, which is used in our Standard Fog Collectors and our Large Fog Collectors, to interested groups.

Publication May 2010

An 1800-word invited contribution was written for the newsletter of the International Rainwater Harvesting Alliance http://www.irha-h2o.org/  by Robert Schemenauer.

The title is:  Complementary Aspects of Fog, Rain and Dew Collection.

The file is available at the link below:

FogQuest_Fog_Rain_Dew

Guatemala – Expanded Project March 2010

Two wonderful FogQuest volunteers, Melissa Rosato from Canada, and Fernanda Rojas from Chile, were in Tojquia from 11 to 21 February to do maintenance on the existing fog-water installation and to work with the villagers to install four more family fog collectors. There are now 30 functional Large Fog Collectors in Tojquia. This is the largest project in the world. Please see the story in the Current Projects section.

Ethiopia – New Project January 2010

Volunteers for the new fog collection project in Ethiopia arrived on 11 January and will stay for three months. Please see the story in the Current Projects section.

Tech Museum Permanent Gallery
September 2009

The Tech Museum in San Jose, California, opened a new permanent gallery called “Technology benefiting humanity” on 1 September 2009. It includes the great work of some of The Tech Laureates over the years. Included among the 11 works chosen to be presented is FogQuest. Indeed, it is positioned near the beginning of the exhibition. Please see the entry in the Awards & Honours section of our website for more information.

New Book Contribution – August 2009

A new book contribution by Robert S. Schemenauer was published this month in a sophmore university text, by Thomas V. Cech, in the USA. The citation is:

Schemenauer, R.S.: Fog harvesting, pp. 41-46. Book contribution in:

Principles of Water Resources, History, Development, Management, and Policy, 3rd Edition, by Thomas V. Cech, John Wiley & Sons, USA, 2010, pp. 546.

New Fog Collection Project in Peru – July 2009

The National Geographic Society in the USA has sponsored the construction of fog collectors for a community near Lima, Peru. The work was guided by two people from Germany and uses the fog collector design originally developed in Chile in the 1980s and utilized by FogQuest since its first projects in 2001. Read more here:http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090709-fog-catchers-peru-water-missions.html