Colegio San Pedro

On Friday 13th we visited Colegio San Pedro, (the school in La Molina that initially inspired the project) and met with Esteban Navarra, the man who co-ordinated the construction of their fog collectors.

The project began in 2002 as a way of augmenting the water supply to the school as it was expanding and water was very expensive. There are 28 mesh screens, each measuring 6 m x 10 m and all in one row along the top of the hill, connected to one pipe that runs all the way along. It took 4 months to build the lot!

Check out the greenery in the school grounds- it's normal for us in Australia right? But we hadn't seen grass like this since arriving over a week ago! It's especially striking against the rocky dirt hills that the school is built into.

The screens are usually rolled up to protect them from the sun and dirt during summer, then unrolled in May to collect fog. However, Esteban said they hadn't been unrolled in 4 years due to El Niño and the lack of sufficiently dense fog- and the meshes had been taken down and used in the chicken coops instead! But when the atrapanieblas are in use they collect about 40 m^3 per week (all together) and the water is used to water the 50 000 m^2 of lawns and gardens at the school!