After the disastrous floods of 1966, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO) began to coordinate an international effort to preserve the city. A number of national committees, too, now exist to save Venice and its art treasures from the combined effects of corrosive air pollution, rising damp, flooding in high-water periods, sheer age, and defacement by pigeons. The completion of an aqueduct from the nearby Alps to Marghera has prevented further aquifer exhaustion, and the effects of international funding are increasingly visible in renovated buildings and monuments.