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"The fireworks are over. The streets are quiet. Now, Sochi, Russia must figure out how to move forward without a clear plan for doing so.\nSochi used to be a relatively peaceful resort town, surrounded by a marsh and snow-topped mountains, but that all changed when it won its Olympic bid. The marsh was trampled by construction necessary for the games. Hotels and stadiums materialized. An international outcry saved the city's stray dogs from a mass killing. All these events have left problems that are now up to Sochi to solve.\nSee also: Glee Over Sochi Problems Is a Problem of Its Own\nHow much has construction hampered the surrounding environment? Who will fill all these hotels and stadiums? What will happen to the dogs now that the international attention is fading?\nWhen it comes to the environment, the damage is already done.\n\"Whenever you're converting green space to some kind of human settlement, there's going to be lasting impacts of some kind,\" Allen Hershkowitz, a Ph.D\u00A0scientist at the\u00A0National Resources Defense Council\u00A0, told\u00A0Mashable.\nNew roads and buildings, while potentially a good thing for a city's infrastructure, fundamentally alter how water is absorbed, especially in marshy terrain such as Sochi.\n\"That impervious surface that they put in is going to persist, even if they don't maintain roads and don't maintain any of those structures,\" said Joseph Kiesecker, a lead scientist for The Nature Conservancy. \"You basically have to build a base and a bed in which to place a road on, and so that can have a dramatic impact on how water moves across the land surface.\"\nMarshes act as a sponge, and they're meant to soak up excess water and release it slowly. Concrete and asphalt prevent the marsh from functioning normally, and that can lead to runoff, erosion and more floods during storms.\nThe railroad that now runs from Sochi up to the surrounding mountains will cause similar damage, and perhaps permanently alter the migratory patterns of local animals such as bears and turs, animals that look like a cross between a goat and an antelope.\nThe $51 billion poured into Sochi for the Olympics made it the most expensive games in history, and all that money and construction was meant to turn Sochi into a resort that was packed year-round, but the chances of that happening don't look good.\nHotel occupancy rates are expected to plummet by between 35% and 40%, according to a report released by\u00A0Moody\u2019s Investors Service. That's to be expected following an event such as the Olympics, but it's worrisome when the same Moody's report estimates that Sochi needs to double its number of visitors per year to around five million if it hopes to keep all its hotels filled.\nAll those people Sochi wants to attract will have plenty of other travel options nearby, too. Anyone in Moscow looking for a snowy resort environment could go to Sochi, but Innsbruck, Austria is just another hour away by plane. People looking for a summer trip in the region might try\u00A0Cesme, Turkey.\nWithout a surge of tourists, Sochi runs the risk of turning from a resort town into a ghost town, much like other Olympic cities such as Sarajevo, the capital of\u00A0Bosnia and Herzegovina that became a war zone after hosting the games.\nAnd it doesn't help that the Russian government has no clear plan for what to do about the potential problems.\nJust before the Games began,\u00A0Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev called for plans for what to do with Sochi following the Olympics. Officials have thrown around ideas from turning the city into a world-renowned resort town to making it a gambling paradise, but nothing is definite. That's an issue because, according to the Associated Press, the city's upkeep is going to cost around $2 billion per year, and Sochi's post-Olympics attractions were supposed to generate a good chunk of that funding.\nLast year, Medvedev drew up plans to convert some of the arenas into an exhibition hall, concert center, mall and more, but those plans aren't definite, either.\nAs for the dogs, there's some good news.\nWhen the world found out that Sochi had contracted a pest control firm to cull many of Sochi's estimated 4,000 strays, there was an international outcry to save them. That led to\u00A0the start of Povodog Sochi, a dog shelter funded by Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska that sits\u00A0on the outskirts of the city. It sprung up in early February and just recently built another outpost around Sochi, according to NBC. Though it can't handle all 4,000 dogs, Povodog Sochi and other shelters are providing homes for those that they can, and they're arranging for the dogs to be adopted by people around the world.\nAnd there are a few other bright spots, too. The\u00A0Rosa Khutor ski resort, with its 48 miles of slopes, 18 ski lifts and billionaire financier, seems to have the infrastructure and the means to weather any coming troubles, and when the World Cup comes to Russia in 2018, the event will use some of Sochi's stadiums.\nRight now, there is still time for the city and federal government to figure out a plan for the Sochi. Much of the natural appeal has been paved over, but the infrastructure is there. Now the city just needs a plan to get people to visit and make it all worthwhile.\nHave something to add to this story? Share it in the comments."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/02/27/sochi-problems-future/>