Far be it from us to suggest that the Winter Olympics take place in a city where winter actually exists, but after organizers were forced to truck in snow for the better part of the 2010 Vancouver Games, it seems short-sighted to have the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, a city dubbed the “Russian Riviera” for its Mediterranean climate.
The temperate weather and the likelihood that organizers will have to create artificial snow forces us to start examining their options, and now we’re terrified. This season Arizona Snowbowl in Flagstaff will become the world’s first ski resort to start piping in 100 percent treated sewage effluent – a.k.a. filtered wastewater – to create fake snow.
So yes, if worse comes to absolute worst, Shaun White could be snowboarding to gold on Russian sewage.
To be fair, the Sochi organizers haven’t even discussed this as an option and the snow passes U.S. Forest Service tests, which claim it’s just below drinking water quality. We’re skeptical of this analysis since the Forest Service owns the land the resort is on, and also because Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity told the New York Times that this process is “a disaster, culturally and environmentally.”
Great news. You guys realize how cold it gets in every other part of Russia, right? Just checking.
