Posted: 4/23/2026
SNR Alumni: Jake Pittman helps public and environment in water resources job
By Ronica Stromberg
Jake Pittman began university classes during the 2020 Covid lockdown, uncertain about the future but certain he wanted to help people somehow.
"I just knew that I wanted to make a change and help people, and I thought that environmental sciences was the way to do that," the 2024 Nebraska alumnus said.
Two months after graduating with an environmental science degree and emphasis in water science, Pittman landed a water technician position with the Lower Platte North Natural Resources District. He worked there six months and received a promotion to a water resources specialist position.
Now working primarily with groundwater, he samples it from dedicated monitoring wells and irrigation wells to check for contaminants. Nitrates, chemicals formed from nitrogen and oxygen, are the main concern in Nebraska, he said. They can cause health problems like cancer and blue baby syndrome, in which a baby’s red blood cells fail to carry enough oxygen, which can lead to death. Nitrates can get into drinking water from natural sources or from human activities like using fertilizers. Runoff from fields can worsen the quality of surface water and harm animals living in it.
In summer, Pittman samples water and may help with chemigation inspections, water-level measurements and maintaining weather stations. In winter, he spends more time working on data collected in the field, well permits and other office work. He helps extension educators hold nitrogen certification classes that farmers need to take every four years to apply fertilizer in the district.
The district maintains the water supply lines from Wahoo to Colon and from David City to Bruno, and Pittman may help with that work. When he first started, he helped out with the district’s tree planting program and the Spring Conservation Sensation, an outdoor educational event for schoolchildren.
"Every day is different, which is one of the things I love about the job," Pittman said. "So, there could be a day where you're sitting in the office for eight hours or there could be a day where you're out in the field all day."
He has seen quite a bit of turnover in his career field and said it might be because of the fieldwork and office work involved. When technicians collect samples, they need to be organized, wear gloves, record proper details on each bottle and fill out chain of custody forms for the lab. Outside, they may encounter unpleasant temperatures, environs and insects and need to be careful around chemicals and electrical equipment.
Pittman grew up in Elkhorn, so he had familiarity with Nebraska weather, but he had no agricultural background. He said he now feels as if he does with all he has learned in the past year.
"One of the biggest lessons I have is probably just working together and working with other people," he said. "For my job, I work with a lot of different farmers from a lot of different backgrounds. And so, I think the biggest lesson I've learned is just being able to talk to anyone, no matter how old they are, no matter how upset, no matter how happy they are. I think just being able to communicate with people who want to voice their opinion, good or bad."
He has encountered farmers upset by inspections or by being told to use less water. He strives to communicate with them by hearing them out and allowing them to voice their opinion while still sharing the best practices for using fertilizer and water.
When he has tested water samples from domestic wells, he has told homeowners about how nitrates and other contaminants can harm their health. The natural resources district tries to help people with contaminated wells by offering to share the costs to treat the water through reverse osmosis filters.
"That's our way of trying to help them protect their health while also making it affordable, because sometimes that stuff can be pretty pricey, and not everyone has the money for it,” Pittman said.
All of this work and his purpose in it he stated as "looking toward the future, leaving the groundwater better than how we found it."
He advises students interested in this type of work to seek related internships and clubs. He interned at Union Pacific Railroad in its environmental management department his junior and senior year. There, he worked on plans to prevent spills from tanks and cars and documented spills that occurred.
He said he wished he had taken part in clubs in college but did not because he worked every year and thought work and classes were a lot to balance by themselves. He worked as a server in the Haymarket his first two years of college.
Classes he recommended as particularly helpful in preparing him for his field of work were Fundamentals of Environmental Sampling and the accompanying lab taught by Arindam Malakar and Catherine Chan and Soil Conservation and Watershed Management taught by Aaron Mittelstet.
As a recent graduate, he said he saw plenty of jobs listed and thinks the real concern for people trying to get a job is finding one that fits them or landing it. If a LinkedIn job shows 500 people have already applied, he pointed out it’s unlikely to be a real option. Similarly, he said hybrid and online jobs he saw received far more applicants than in-person jobs. Location may be a major consideration, he said, with jobs in Lincoln and Omaha seeming to be easier to fill than jobs in rural areas.
In his own job search, he said he applied to "everything under the sun" and would recommend a similar approach for other jobseekers.
"The advice I would give someone is to apply to as many places as possible and just see where that goes," he said.