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When the federation was organized, there were statewide environmental groups, but none that focused on the coast. While in graduate school at UNC-Chapel Hill, Miller worked on a national study of how to protect water supplies. He was a research assistant, studying under Ray Burby, a professor of regional planning at UNC-CH. The experience gave him a firsthand look at effective environmental groups around the nation, such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Annapolis, Md., which has worked to restore and protect the bay and its tributaries from pollution.

"It showed him that if people are proactive, there are ways to do things right," recalls Burby, who is now retired. "He really had a commitment to coastal North Carolina. He has this strong interest, particularly in water quality."

Miller developed a vision for a group modeled on the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to protect North Carolina's sounds and waterways.

"He saw the changes that were coming at a rapid pace and saw a need for like-minded citizens to come together to protect what was special about the North Carolina coast," says Derb Carter, director of the Southern Environmental Law Center's office in Chapel Hill, who drafted the federation's articles of incorporation.

Strip-mining battle

The first issue Miller tackled in the early 1980s was a proposal by the peat mining industry to strip-mine 120,000 acres of peat bogs between the Pamlico and Albemarle sounds. Miller, seeing a threat to water quality, organized opposition.

"We needed someone who could go talk to fishermen," says Bill Holman, visiting scholar at Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and a former lobbyist for environmental groups. "They probably wouldn't have listened to Bill Holman, Sierra Club lobbyist from Raleigh. Todd got in his truck and went from fishing community to fishing community."

More than 600 people -- a good slice of Hyde County's population then -- showed up at a public hearing. Many were fishermen.

"That became the turning point in many ways," Derb Carter says, "and the project was eventually abandoned."

The federation has undertaken dozens of ambitious wetland restoration projects and tapped state clean water grants, federal money and foundation money to preserve fragile coastal lands and restore them. Since 1996, more than 7,000 acres have been preserved, including Hoop Pole Creek, 31 acres of maritime forest and salt flat on Atlantic Beach, where the public can enjoy nature trails.

Jim Swartzenberg, owner of J&B AquaFood in Holly Ridge and president of Shellfish Growers of North Carolina, said Miller rallied concerns about a proposal to put high-rise condominiums on Permuda Island, a narrow island in Onslow County.

"We have oyster leases all around it," Swartzenberg says. "The neighborhoods opposed it. He helped us out a lot."

Today, Swartzenberg said, when he looks across the Stump Sound at Topsail Island, he sees houses and development. But nearby Permuda Island remains in a natural state, now part of the state's coastal reserve.

"Todd had a vision for the Coastal Federation to preserve the coast," Swartzenberg says. "He hasn't lost sight of that vision. It took a lot of guts to do what he did."

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