[ntrz]

The reason I read it as being a major issue is that it is apparently (maybe I'm misreading this) described as the reason the previous effort failed:

> Earlier attempts to turn the mist into usable water failed. In 1990 fog nets at Chungungo, a fishing village north of Los Tomes, captured 8,000 litres a day. Villagers argued about how to share responsibility for maintaining the atrapanieblas.

It sounds like the nets worked, and the only negative element of the project described in the article that could account for the failure is the issues around maintenance. And then it's mentioned again in the context of open "questions" of the current project. But maybe the emphasis wasn't intended by the author, I may be reading too much into it.

[mdp2021]

No, I think the quotation meant: «Chile has been investigating fog capture since the 1950s [...] [BUT] earlier attempts to turn the mist into usable water failed [UNTIL, (e.g.)] in 1990 fog nets at Chungungo, a fishing village north of Los Tomes, captured 8,000 litres a day. Villagers argued about how to share responsibility for maintaining the atrapanieblas».

They started attempting to obtain water from fog in the '50s, until in the '90s the first working atrapanieblas were successfully deployed. "The villagers regarded it as a collective critical success and conversely a common responsibility".