There's probably a mod that restores the original method on the forums. The game is 10x better with mods. A lot of them simply add more types of prefabs that can spawn, for instance, or more items etc.
If it were an additional method of collecting water it would have been fine. It's model and mechanics suggests it's a dew collector (does it work faster when it rains?). But yeah, they should have kept in the option to fill jars from a river. More annoying is how much 'heat' those things generate. It makes sense why a generator running would attract zombies, but a plastic drum with a tarp funneling into it shouldn't be noticable at all to a zombie. Yet have a couple of water collectors and you'll be dealing with screamers every 10 minutes.
You couldn't just take a jar to the river and boil it. You had to build this wind moisture contraption thing.
Yeah we never ran into that.
I'll be 100% honest though that I haven't touched the game in over a year.