Olympic Construction Sins: The Leaning Houses of Sochi

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/environmental-damage-and-botched-construction-mar-sochi-a-942803.html



Vladimir Putin promised the Olympics in Sochi would be as green as could be. Instead, the construction of facilities has had disastrous consequences for the environment, particularly for the residents of Baku Street, whose homes have become the victims of man-made erosion.

Olympic Construction Sins: The Leaning Houses of Sochi
By Benjamin Bidder in Sochi, Russia
January 10, 2014 – 11:54 AM

When Tigran Skiba, 52, leaves home in his delivery truck each morning to supply fresh bread throughout Sochi, he gets a view of the new sporting facilities: Fisht Olympic Stadium in the valley and the grand ice-skating palace, which shimmers in the moonlight like a pearl. It looks as if it's all right nextdoor.

Oympia Park is located less than two kilometers away from Skiba's home. What worries him these days, though, is the fact that this distance isn't remaining constant. The space between his home and the stadium is decreasing, slowly but ever so surely. The hillside upon which his home is built is sliding down into the valley at a pace of 1.5 meters (nearly five feet) per year, Skiba claims.

Residents of Baku Street had long been puzzled by the erosion that was causing their homes to slide or lean. A thick forest begins just behind the home of Skiba's neighbors. Sometimes they collect firewood there. It's in this forest that they first discovered the reason for the landslide. Excavators there dug out a pit where trucks had been dumping rubble -- waste from the Olympic construction sites. "The garbage dump has altered the groundwater flow on the hill," says Vladimir Kimayev, a member of the group Environmental Watch. "That's why the homes are sliding."

The worst hit home is a multi-family structure located across the street from the Skibas. Over the course of a few months, the five-story building slid down the hill along Baku Street. Before it was torn down, it destroyed the wooden hut of a neighbor. Skiba says a five-story building should never have been allowed to be built in Baku Street. The construction company responsible for it, like so many in Sochi, had not obtained any official permits.