… New research finds that by deploying fog collectors — fine mesh stretched between two poles —  in the mountains around Alto Hospicio, the city could harvest an average of 2.5 liters of water per square meter of netting each day. Large fog collectors cost between $1,000 and $4,500 and measure 40 square meters, so just one placed near Alto Hospicio (in Chile) could grab 36,500 liters of water a year without using any electricity, according to a paper published on Thursday in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science. … 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.