College of Architecture: Meet Jeff

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03/16/2015 Added

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UNL College of Architecture MCRP - Jeff Polkowski

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[00:00:03.017]Science has a lot of jargon in it sometimes
[00:00:04.800]and I feel like if you're able
[00:00:05.969]to really explain it to someone,
[00:00:07.114]they're gonna pick it up.
[00:00:08.372]If you're really able to carry someone through it
[00:00:10.155]and show them why you should be environmentally active,
[00:00:13.024]people are gonna be environmentally active.
[00:00:15.764]My name is Jeffery Polkowski
[00:00:16.821]and I'm from New York City.
[00:00:18.261]I am the Environmental Program Coordinater
[00:00:20.660]for the city of Lincoln Public Works
[00:00:22.101]and Watershed Management Division,
[00:00:23.605]and that is a mouthful.
[00:00:25.781]I moved out here after getting my undergrad
[00:00:27.264]in Earth Science and Water Resources
[00:00:29.034]because I was very interested
[00:00:31.274]in the way cities work with water systems.
[00:00:34.048]Water is one of my main concerns
[00:00:35.925]and it's been one of my big passions
[00:00:37.387]and that's really what I wanted to work with
[00:00:38.805]and urban storm water runoff has always been
[00:00:40.735]a big deal to me.
[00:00:42.101]I came to Lincoln for the school.
[00:00:43.519]I didn't wanna just get a masters in geology
[00:00:45.611]or a masters in hydrogeology,
[00:00:46.890]but I didn't just want to get a city planning degree either.
[00:00:49.205]I wanted to get one that was, you know, somewhat dynamic
[00:00:51.605]and worked with both of those.
[00:00:52.971]Nebraska was one of the very few
[00:00:54.314]that offered that opportunity for me
[00:00:55.626]and I had looked through
[00:00:56.543]every planning program in the country,
[00:00:58.560]and this is one of the few that actually popped up.
[00:01:00.608]After a couple phone calls,
[00:01:01.567]I decided that I wanted to come to Nebraska,
[00:01:03.680]and then after a little while I got in contact
[00:01:05.707]with the city of Lincoln
[00:01:06.623]with this division specifically
[00:01:08.267]and they had a bunch of Clean Water Act 319 grant money
[00:01:13.514]which is a very fancy beaurocratic way
[00:01:16.277]of saying that they had a bunch of money
[00:01:17.556]that they had to use for reducing E. coli levels
[00:01:19.531]within Antelope Creek.
[00:01:20.628]I said "Can I turn this into my thesis?"
[00:01:22.293]And they were like yeah!
[00:01:23.371]Take this, just go!
[00:01:24.842]Implement projects now, you have two years
[00:01:25.995]until the funding goes away.
[00:01:28.619]They kinda threw me in the deep end
[00:01:29.899]and they really let me do whatever I want
[00:01:32.756]within reason, really,
[00:01:34.250]and it's become a labor of love
[00:01:36.864]and it's made a lot of results.
[00:01:38.492]I do a couple things with my grant funding.
[00:01:40.479]One of them that I do is that I offer a cost share program.
[00:01:43.061]If you're willing to put any type of practice
[00:01:46.389]on your property that would reduce
[00:01:48.608]or at least slow down the flow
[00:01:50.560]for urban storm water runoff before it reaches
[00:01:52.245]the road system or the storm drain or the creek.
[00:01:55.147]I would be willing to pay 75 percent of that
[00:01:56.779]up to $2000 is what my program did
[00:01:59.210]and I ended up having 40 cost share participants
[00:02:01.856]within my watershed.
[00:02:03.498]In addition to the cost share program
[00:02:04.843]I do a lot of other light structural or non-structural work
[00:02:08.725]within my watershed
[00:02:10.411]to reduce E. coli levels within Antelope Creek.
[00:02:12.299]I kinda saw it as an opportunity like what we have
[00:02:14.068]adopt-a-stream programs,
[00:02:15.829]we have an adopt-a-highway program,
[00:02:17.195]why can't we have an adopt-a-pet waste container program?
[00:02:19.859]So pretty much I placed pet waste containers
[00:02:22.154]within my watershed
[00:02:23.210]and we found private sanitation haulers
[00:02:26.400]that are willing to take care and maintain
[00:02:27.946]these pet waste containers in exchange for advertising
[00:02:30.549]on the pet waste container where it says
[00:02:32.149]"this is maintained by x, y, and z."
[00:02:34.016]They're gonna be there anyway.
[00:02:34.954]They're stopping at these routes all the time.
[00:02:37.204]An advertisement is just a cost of them doing something
[00:02:39.584]that they're gonna be doing anyway.
[00:02:40.585]It very mutually beneficial for the city
[00:02:42.571]and it's working.
[00:02:43.691]People are using the pet waste containers
[00:02:45.215]and I like to say that
[00:02:46.293]I really left something behind in this city.
[00:02:48.138]That there's a piece of public infrastructure now
[00:02:50.357]that I brought from fruition and carried that project
[00:02:52.991]from start to finish.
[00:02:54.175]Lincoln offers a lot of opportunities
[00:02:55.391]that you're not gonna get in a lot of places.
[00:02:57.183]Because they encourage you
[00:02:58.356]to really roll up your sleeves and get dirty
[00:03:01.077]and have a real project come to fruition
[00:03:03.947]that you're very proud of.
[00:03:05.290]If you really got a good idea they're going to try
[00:03:07.179]and work with you here and it's-
[00:03:09.292]I feel like I have an opportunity
[00:03:11.060]that I can't get in most schools.
[00:03:12.522]They're very supportive of our career.
[00:03:13.899]They care very much about our career.
[00:03:16.075]It's not about just keeping them in school, on campus,
[00:03:18.697]spending your, you know, student loan money,
[00:03:21.397]it's a lot about really seeing
[00:03:23.227]the results of your work.
[00:03:24.837](relaxing music)

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College of Architecture: Meet Jeff

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