Image: Stock Photo. FreeImages.com/Sean Carpenter
Guests staying at a modern hotel in Sochi, Russia, for the 2014 Winter Olympics recall signs in English next to their water faucets that read: "Do not use on your face because it contains something very dangerous."
Russia spent a staggering $50 billion on the games to impress the world but could not offer visitors a basic: clean water to drink or bathe with.
Sochi's water is an example of the massive environmental degradation in the former Soviet Union that began in the 1920s when Josef Stalin ordered industrialization at all costs to catch up with the West.