Today, a duct system runs through the dried-out area. Wheat, fruit, and wine grapes are cultivated in the Pontine region. The "Agro Pontino" is a flowering landscape with modern cities with both prewar and postwar architecture. By 2000, about 520,000 inhabitants lived in this formerly deserted region. The Battle of the Swamps, however, is never quite over; without constant vigilance, dredging the canals, repairing and updating the pumps, and so on, the enemy would soon return. The spectre of distant problems remains: the prospect of chemical pollution of the environment, DDT-resistant mosquitos, and medicine-resistant strains of malaria.