MUMBAI: Unlike other airports in the world or even in the country, an integral feature of running the city’s airport involves fighting a daily battle to ensure that only one kind of winged creatures lands there.

For, this is an airport laid out around a network of open drains and so the mosquito menace at its new international terminal 2 (T2) is one that is here to stay ad infinitum.

“There is no underground sewerage system in the locality that covers the airport surroundings like Airport Colony, Sahar village, Lilawadi etc,” said fex-corporator Nicholas Almeida .

“To accommodate T2, open drains that were running through the plot were diverted and now the terminal is surrounded by open drains, which carry discharge to and from Mithi River. The drains are so huge that they cannot be covered and secondly even if we desilt it daily it is difficult to get rid of the mosquitoes. It is a geographic disadvantage for T2,” said a senior civic official.

For the airport operator, the Mumbai International Airport Pvt Ltd (MIAL), this entailed putting in place a slew of measures to fortify pest control. MIAL had invited agencies to carry out a study into the cause of the mosquito menace, which came to fore in a big way weeks after the new terminal was opened.

“As per the survey conducted by specialized agencies, the main cause of the menace is the breeding zone in a nullah near the airport,” said an MIAL spokesperson.

“In the last few days, there has been a perceptible decrease in number of mosquitoes in the terminal. We have been extra cautious about this menace. For instance, though the water fountains in T2 did not contribute to the problem, we shut them down,” the official added.

The measures in place mean that unlike other open drains in the city, those near T2 are cleaned and desilted every single day. Secondly, to kill the larvae, fogging is carried out twice each day.

To counter the rampant water-borne larvae of mosquitoes originating from Mithi River and the network of gutters nearby, guppy fish, termed as the best biological eradicators of these pests have been introduced.

