Fog catchers in a mountain on the outskirts of Lima.Courtesy Abel Cruz

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The night he found water under the nylon fence he had just installed on the perimeter of his property, in the district of Ancón, 40 kilometers from Lima, Peru, Abel Cruz Gutiérrez knew he was facing a revelation. This man who today is 56 years old, incipient baldness and left indecipherable had just discovered a simple but powerful technology to capture the water of the dense clouds that during dawn accumulate in the arid hills of the Lima coastal desert.

That night, Abel remembered his childhood in a tiny hamlet in the jungle of Cusco, when he had to carry large buckets of water from a stream every day and carry them 600 meters up, to his house, nestled on top of a small mountain. "As a child, and by force, I learned the value of water for a family without domestic connections. That's why, when I discovered the drops of water that the Rachel mesh had captured, I knew that I had found a way to steal water from the sky, "explains Cruz from the house of his in-laws, in the middle of the mountain, which is reached after a serpentinesque and endless trip from the city of Cusco.

Abel Cruz Gutiérrez, president of the association Movimiento Peruanos Sin Agua.Courtesy Abel Cruz

It has been 20 years since that night in which Abel, zootechnical engineer and president of the association Movimiento Peruanos Sin Agua, decided to dedicate his life to spreading a fog trap system, a technology capable of providing water to the more than two million inhabitants of Lima who lack access to running water. Families who depend on private tanker trucks, which sell the square meter of liquid at 10 times what the neighborhoods of the Lima considered modern, with access to the supply network, pay.

Lima is the driest megacity in America. A metropolis where it never rains, and in which the extensive plains of barren land, covered with sand and with hardly any vegetation, are the recurring landscape of a city that extends from the shores of the Pacific Ocean to the foothills of the Andes Mountains.

In this scenario, those who suffer most from water scarcity are – as almost always – the poorest communities and populations, often migrants from the Peruvian Andes. Like Abel, who had to migrate to the capital to study a university career.

A fog catcher captures between 200 and 400 liters of water per day

The water collection system that Abel has been promoting for two decades consists of a simple, economical and highly scalable technology. "These are meshes woven with nylon threads of six by four meters that, placed on wooden or aluminum supports in the high areas of the hills, have the capacity to capture thousands of drops, which adhere to the meshes and fall into a tube that leads them to a tank through a domestic distribution and accumulation system," says Abel, who says that each of these fog catchers can accumulate between 200 and 400 liters of water per day, depending on the density and accumulation of clouds in the environment.

His project took time to mature, but once he did, he managed to cross borders and capture the attention and admiration of half the world. Abel estimates to have installed in two decades about three thousand fog catchers, within the framework of projects developed in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Mexico and Chile. He has lectured in Asia, Europe and the United States, and his NGO has twice received the Antonio Brack Egg National Environmental Award in Peru, was a finalist for Mexico's CEMEX-Tec award, which recognizes the development of high-impact projects in sustainable development in Latin America, and ranked second in the Google Challenge, above 2,300 other sustainable projects in the world.

The meshes are also used horizontally to support the growth of vegetables. Courtesy of Abel Cruz

However, Abel's curiosity and ingenuity go far beyond international recognition and environmental activism. During the last years, it has been developing innovations to its original project, and today it reveals to América Futura the fruits of a long investigation.

"One of the problems with water captured by fog catchers is that it can be used for irrigation, grooming and household cleaning, but it is not suitable for human consumption. So we have been working on natural purification techniques, and we have found elements of nature that have been used for millennia by ancient Peruvians to transform turbid water into drinking water," Abel explains.

It refers to moringa, also known as "tree of life", a plant native to India and resistant to droughts, whose seed has the property of coagulating the mud that contains water, reducing its turbidity and combating the bacterial activity of water between 98 and 99%. According to Abel's research, by combining the seed of moringa with the root of the rat-rat, a medicinal plant from the jungle of Cusco, it is possible to purify water without the need for chemical agents.

In addition, Abel has been developing variants of its traditional fog catchers: an intelligent fog catcher, which incorporates built-in software thatrotates the nylon mesh according to the direction of the wind; and a three-dimensional fog catcher, which combines fog water capture technology with another, responsible for generating steam and condensation through the use of aluminum and glass in the middle of these panels. "The idea is to be able to capture water even in seasons of little rain and cloudiness," says the engineer.

Abel Cruz explains how the fog catcher works near a settlement on the outskirts of Lima.Courtesy Abel Cruz

However, Abel is clear that his final project is the one he has been working on for more than a year. An idea that aims to regenerate springs and lagoons that are predestined to dry up and disappear due to the appearance of natural cracks. "The project is already underway. We have identified three lagoons that are draining in the mountains of Cusco, and we are about to close a deal with international cooperation to begin with the implementation of this infrastructure, "explains Abel, who plans to fill the cracks of the springs with stones and install a "dome" of fog catchers. "The idea is to build a structure similar to that of a roofed coliseum, and that the water captured from the clouds returns to these water eyes."

Abel dreams big. He wants all of Peru's poor settlements, most of which are located in highland, humid areas, to have access to drinking water without exception. That is why he is enthusiastic about the offer he has received from the mayor of Lima, who has proposed installing 10,000 new fog catchers in the city. And he puffs up his chest when he says that the main car distributor in the country has proposed installing fog catchers on the Pasamayo route, a road known for the recurrence of accidents due to poor visibility. "We are convinced that with fog catchers we can reduce between 70% and 80% of cloud density, and thereby save thousands of lives," he says, proudly.

With his hat and his perennial smile, Abel Cruz Gutiérrez has recently been distinguished by the Bicentennial Special Project of the Presidency of the Peruvian Council of Ministers. But his story doesn't end here. "There are millions who do not have water, and in a short time there will be many more," Abel says with some frustration, as he sees in the distance a mountain crowned by a white cloud like a speck of cotton.