TODD MILLER ’ 78
was public outrage that the state was con-
sidering this project.”
As opposition mounted, the project
stalled in red tape, and First Colony Farms
began selling or trading most of the land.
One tract in Dare County became a bomb-
ing range, and tracts in Dare and Tyrrell
counties eventually became the Alligator
River National Wildlife Refuge and the
Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.
None too big, too small
Miller’s campaign against the peat-mining
operation set the tone for much of what has
followed. From the beginning, the federation
has worked to convince people that the
biggest pollutant in coastal North Carolina is
not leaking septic systems, overflowing hog-waste lagoons, municipal waste-treatment
plants, industries or chemicals from farms
(even though all of these are problems).
The biggest pollutant, Miller said, is
water — specifically storm water that
invades brackish estuaries, lowers salinity
and carries a load of grime, grease, oil,
chemicals and germ-laden waste from pets
and wildlife. In Carteret County, shellfish
sanitation workers automatically close certain clam and oyster beds after a heavy rain
because they have learned from experience
that storm water from cleared land always
packs a load of fecal coliform bacteria and
enteric viruses that make people sick.
STEVE EXUM ’ 92
“No one had ever really connected the
dots between storm water runoff and water
quality issues until we appealed a few per-
mits and presented the evidence,” Miller
said. “Storm water is the number one pol-
lutant we have on the coast.”
Miller’s federation works to stop the
storm water before it hits the estuaries —
retaining it and filtering it as nature does, in
coastal swamps, marshes and woodlands. The
best option, from an environmental point of
view, is to keep nature intact, and the federa-
tion has done so wherever it could.
In 2005, Miller worked a deal with state
and federal agencies to buy 1,443 acres of
mostly undeveloped land along the west
bank of the White Oak River and transfer
it to the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission to be managed as game lands. Because
the Croatan National Forest occupies the
east bank, a nine-mile stretch of one of
North Carolina’s most ecologically important estuaries will remain wooded and
closed to development.
The coastal federation challenges large-scale development and engages volunteers in small
projects along the coast. Eighth-graders Chandler Fasulo and Hannah Adams monitor fecal
coliform levels with teacher Margie Meisenheimer at Smyrna Elementary and Middle School.
But the federation can’t buy land every
day, and the state’s Clean Water Manage-
ment Trust Fund, which since 1996 has
enabled the federation and other groups to
acquire environmentally sensitive lands and
put them into conservation, this year saw
its budget slashed from a scheduled $50
million to $11.25 million. The timing is
unfortunate, Miller said. “The last few
years, land values have come down some
because of the economic downturn. It’s a
good time to be buying land and putting it
into conservation.”
Much of the federation’s effort goes
‘You’ve got to have the science,
the laws, the technology.
But the final push will always
be the public interest.
When you combine all of those
elements, you’ve got something.’
Todd Miller
toward a broad array of smaller projects. We
visit a middle school where the federation
teaches children how to build and manage
a water garden to capture storm water in a
shallow basin planted with water-loving
vegetation.
40
November/December 2011
