Expert excels: Marie Campbell's Sapphos Environmental Inc. drafts impact reports and other studies for some of the region's highest-profile projects.

AFTER 12 years of managing environmental projects in the government and private sectors, Marie Campbell struck out on her own in 1992.

To call her success "instant" would be only a slight overstatement.

Within an hour of announcing the move, Campbell got a call telling her that the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California had an open contract for technical writing. The deadline was the following day. So Campbell and a friend stayed up all night putting together the proposal, even creating a company letterhead.

In search of a name, they found inspiration with the ancient Greek poet Sappho, one of the first women to have her work in writing. Two weeks later, Campbell's new company, Sapphos Environmental Inc., won the contract and the MWD remains a client today.

"At the time, there were a lot of companies complaining that the minority- and women-owned enterprises weren't putting the quality product on the table that they needed to," said Campbell. "I knew I could do that."

Sapphos has since grown to a 45-employee company, with its headquarters in Pasadena and a five-person satellite office in Santa Monica that opened last summer. Besides consulting on environmental compliance, Sapphos offers planning and resource management from Sacramento to the Mexican border.

Projects have ranged from community development planning for the now-defunct Ahmanson Ranch project--the ranch was turned into parkland--to biological resource surveys in Kern County for proposed wind energy sites.

One of its most recent jobs was writing the environmental impact report for widening the band shell at the Hollywood Bowl and improving its acoustics. The EIR was challenged in court unsuccessfully, and then upheld on appeal. The new shell is under construction with completion scheduled in time for the 2004 concert season.

Love of nature

A native Californian, Campbell comes from a family with a strong tradition of education and a love of nature. Campbell proudly relates how her maternal grandfather, a Mexican Indian who taught himself to read, worked double shifts as a mining engineer in Mexico to send his five children to private school. Campbell's mother, a Girl Scout leader, instilled in her a strong appreciation for the environment.

"Los Angeles as a city is really coming of age," said Campbell, citing the realignment of Grand Avenue and the recent opening of the Disney Concert Hall. "We're really creating a downtown core area and taking a city that sprawled out and grew over time and creating spaces for people within the city."

Campbell's passion for the environment emerged at UCLA, where she started out as a biology major on a pre-med track. She shifted to the newly created Ecosystems major her junior year.

After graduation, she landed a full-time internship with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which eventually led to a job and a master's degree in geography. She later went into the private sector, helping a large environmental services company in Orange County build its federal program using the expertise she gained from the corps. But after several years of disorganized projects and grueling commutes from Pasadena, Campbell decided to open her own shop.

She worked out of her guestroom for the first few months but knew it was time to move to an office when her daughters roller-skated through an important client meeting in the dining room.

Until recently, Sapphos has grown at a relatively brisk pace. Its $5.2 million in revenues for 2003 represents an average annual growth rate of 30 percent.

But the firm is beginning to feel the impact of an economy still in the doldrums. With the majority of the firm's business coming from the budget-tightening public sector, Campbell is braced for more fallout.

"The slowdown for a lot of people started in October 2002 and in some cases after Sept. 11," Campbell said. "Due to the nature of our projects, we were not affected by that. We had three huge contracts last year that all came to a closure at one time and we're just now starting to feel it."

Nationwide, environmental consulting and engineering companies logged a domestic growth rate of 2.2 percent in 2002, compared with 5 percent to 5.5 percent from 1999 through 2001, according to the Wade publication Environmental Business Journal.

Paul Zofnass, president of Environmental Financial Consulting Group, expects 2003 numbers to be similar to 2002, with companies in the federal government and private sectors faring better than their counterparts in state and local government.

"Two factors drive (environmental services)," said Zofnass. "How many regulations and rules the government is pushing on firms, and the overall economy, although it takes longer to feel that change."

With fewer projects in the pipeline, Sapphos let three employees go and is holding off on hiring. Campbell expects things to pick up by the summer, but some clients have warned her it might not be until October, as projects may get pushed back if there is still uncertainty in the market.

Meantime, much of the firm's work comes from extension services and smaller projects from existing clients. The firm is also cultivating relationships with government agencies that are going ahead with projects, albeit on a smaller scale; Sapphos is working on a number of small historic resource projects for the city of Los Angeles, for example.

On the private side, the firm has a couple of master planned communities in the works, including a joint public/private project that will be going before the Chino City Council for approval in the next few months.

"The city has really worked with us and our design team," she Campbell said. "We are now putting a community college on the property and a whole span of housing, from apartments and high-density all the way up to those bigger lots."

PROFILE

Sapphos Environmental Inc.

Year founded: 1992

Core Business: Planning, resource management and environmental compliance services

Revenues in 2002: $3.9 million

Revenues in 2003: $5.2 million

Employees in 2002: 37

Employees in 2003: 50

Goal: Maintain revenues in the $3.5 million to $5 million range until the economy opens up

Driving Force: Create projects that build the fabric of the community and protect the surrounding environment