Titanium Environmental Services is an outgrowth of past experience, an interest and curiosity of the world and a desire to embark on the road to entrepreneurship for founder and president Mitch Wilson.

This has been a milestone year for the decade old firm. It was named Longview’s Small Business of the Year by the Longview Chamber of Commerce. Titanium moved into new offices and opened another branch office in Shreveport.

But Wilson said those are all signs the basic business philosophy the firm was formed upon is solid.

“We’ve built our reputation on doing our job well and on being efficient at doing it,” he said. Today, Titanium Environmental has a staff of 18 people now, including 14 professional associated who hold a variety of degrees and have far ranging backgrounds and areas of expertise.

Among those is Laura Rectenwald, who holds a PhD. She worked with Wilson at another engineering and consulting firm and was among the first to join the staff of Titanium in 2000.

“We started out with just the two of us in leased space in the old Bank One building,” she said. “We started by working with and for friends and people we knew based on our reputation and experience.”

Rectenwald said the firm’s executives had been looking for a more permanent home base for several years when the former Hagen’s Lighting location at 311 E. Cotton St., came on the market. With plenty of office space to accommodate current needs and anticipated future growth, along with warehouse space to store and have ready access to field equipment, the structure seemed to be a near perfect fit.

Wilson said among the factors driving the firm’s growth have been an ever increasing number of rules and regulations at the local, state and federal level dealing largely with environmental issues and concerns. While individual business owners, energy producers and others may find the array of Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and federal Environmental Protection Agency rules cumbersome, Wilson said his staff is familiar how to comply and navigate through the red tape.

“We work with every kind of business from paint body shops and dry cleaners to operators of natural gas compressor stations and steel mills,” Wilson said. “We can provide computer modeling and help with permitting for TCEQ and EPA on both the air and water side of issues.”

Rectenwald said waste disposal for a variety of businesses has become an area of importance for many types of businesses these days as they meet state and federal guidelines.

“We can also help firms in real estate transactions to help ensure the property they may be trying to acquire was not a Super Fund site or has other liabilities,” she said. “Getting us involved is like an insurance policy, we can research records going back to the 1880s for some locations, like those next to railroad tracks.”

Wilson said this up front service can save headaches and expense later.

“The EPA can be pretty severe,” he said. “In some cases the property owner can be held responsible for cleaning up contamination even though they were not responsible for causing it,” he said.

The scope of services offered include:

Environmental compliance audits;

Property transfer and development services Oil and gas industry regulatory compliance services; Air permitting; Storm water permitting services; A variety of services for the petroleum industry.

Prior to heading down the road of entrepreneurship, Wilson worked at Ana-Lab in Kilgore and Mobley Environmental, where he developed expertise in landfill management, hazardous waste disposal and other areas.

He said the entire field of providing environmental services is growing as industry and government place more emphasis on operating in a more environmentally friendly way.

Rectenwald said some business comes the firm’s way via law firms, seeking to help clients and in some cases seeking help in cleaning up past problems.

“We also do a lot of air emissions modeling work and are more and more involved in the oil and gas industries,” she said. “Our goal is to help our clients to be able to make and do what they want to do.’

Wilson said he expects the need for services like Titanium offer to grow in the future.

“We all drink water and breath air and our clients want to do the right things — that’s what we help them with,” Wilson said. “We help them to become compliant as efficiently and painlessly as possible.”