Engineer Patrice Jacobs has put forward a proposal to Georgetown's Mayor and City Council that would see the capital's drainage network replaced with a fully automated, round-the-clock water management system. The plan, presented to municipal officials this month, centres on offsite monitoring technology designed to operate sluices and kokers without requiring staff to physically attend each site.

The proposal arrives as Georgetown continues to grapple with a structural problem that has shaped the city since its founding. The capital sits below sea level, and its drainage has historically depended on workers manually adjusting gates in response to tidal movement. As the city expands and rainfall patterns grow less predictable, officials have faced mounting pressure to find a system that responds faster than human labour allows.

Georgetown's vulnerability is not new, but it has become harder to manage. The city's elevation means that water must be actively expelled rather than left to drain naturally, and the tidal cycles of the Demerara River and the Atlantic dictate when sluices can safely be opened. Engineers have long relied on a gravity-fed system, supported by kokers, the wooden and concrete sluice gates that have controlled water flow in and out of the city for generations.

The legacy system depends heavily on manual operation. Workers use winches to raise and lower gates, timing their actions around tidal charts and visual inspection of water levels. This arrangement has functioned for decades, but it carries clear limitations. Human operators cannot monitor every koker simultaneously, and delays in opening or closing gates during sudden downpours have contributed to flooding in low-lying neighbourhoods. Jacobs has described the current methodology as poorly suited to a city facing both climate variability and population growth.

The system proposed by Jacobs would shift much of this responsibility to sensors and automated controls. Real-time water level data would feed into a monitoring system capable of triggering sluice operations without waiting for a worker to reach the site. Gates would seal automatically once water levels reached a set threshold, reducing the lag between detection and response. Jacobs has been careful to frame automation as a tool that lessens, rather than eliminates, the need for human involvement. Maintenance crews would still be required to service sensors, inspect mechanical components and intervene when equipment malfunctions. The proposal does not present the system as self-sufficient, but as one that reduces reliance on physical labour for routine operation while keeping technical oversight in place.

The timing of the proposal is not incidental. It follows the recent launch of a National Drainage and Irrigation Strategy, which sets out a broader government commitment to modernising water management across the country. That strategy places emphasis on climate resilience and on incorporating data into infrastructure planning, rather than relying solely on inherited engineering practices. Jacobs' proposal for Georgetown fits within this wider policy direction, positioning the city's drainage upgrade as a local application of national priorities.

The financial implications are significant. Automated sluices and the sensor networks that support them require capital outlay well beyond what manual systems demand, and city officials will need to weigh this against the cost of flood damage under the current arrangement. Proponents of automation argue that the upfront expenditure is offset by reduced emergency response costs and fewer disruptions to commerce and transport during flooding events. Whether the City Council views this as sufficient justification for budget allocation remains to be seen, and any decision will likely involve scrutiny of financing options, including possible support tied to the national strategy.

For now, the proposal has been demonstrated to city officials but has not been formally adopted. The Mayor and City Council face decisions on feasibility studies, financing structures and how an automated system might be phased into the city's existing public works budget. Jacobs' plan represents one option among several that officials will need to consider as Georgetown works out how to fund and implement infrastructure suited to its geography and its growth.

‍