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Robin Smith, Ross' assistant secretary for environmental protection, says the coastal act's mandate of land-use planning in 20 coastal counties made North Carolina an innovator in the 1970s.

A later addition to the act banned seawalls and preserved North Carolina's beaches. Seawalls protect beachfront homes but foster erosion as waves crash into them and stir up sand, she says.

"Milton has made an enormous contribution on issues of water law," Smith says. "You can look at other coastlines in the United States and see development that is closer to the shoreline and at greater risk, and you can see seawalls and other types of erosion-control measures that have caused the public beach to disappear at high tide."

Jeff Miller, executive director of the nonprofit North Carolina Coastal Federation, agreed that the seawall ban may be Heath's most important legacy, even though it came more than a decade after Heath drafted the original coastal act bill.

Miller says the act made oceanfront development a matter for public debate, not just private interests, giving beachgoers as much say as property owners who want seawalls to protect their homes.

"What CAMA [the Coastal Area Management Act] provides is a pretty open and democratic process by which people can have their say, and that's not generally available to people in a lot of states," Miller says.

Although he's a self-professed liberal Democrat, Heath credits former Republican Gov. James Holshouser for supporting the coastal protection act. Holshouser defeated Democrat Skipper Bowles in 1972, and Heath thought the new Republican leader wouldn't support controls on coastal development. But Holshouser used his clout to help the bill get though without being watered down by amendments.

In the mountains

Ross noted that Heath's influence also stretches west to the Blue Ridge Mountains. In 1971, Heath drafted one of the tougher pesticide laws in the nation.

In the early 1980s, Heath drafted the Mountain Ridge Protection Act, and legislators passed it in 1983 in response to the construction of a condominium complex on Little Sugar Mountain that mars the view from Grandfather Mountain. The law bans buildings taller than 40 feet from mountaintops.

"There was a problem, and that law addressed it," Ross says. "He's contributed to the state's environmental law and environmental programs at a very high level and over a very long period. We've been lucky to have him."

Heath's work takes him all over the state. He shares his expertise with county health officials, and soil and water conservation officials. He has also been teaching a graduate course on environmental law at the UNC-CH School of Public Health for most of his career.

Heath is the longest-serving faculty member on campus, but the School of Government almost lost him in the early 1970s, when former UNC-system President Bill Friday asked him to become a university vice president and lobbyist at the legislature.

He believed in the work he was doing at the School of Government and turned Friday down. He now realizes he would have missed out on writing most of North Carolina's environmental laws.

"That offers about as good a professional experience as I can imagine," he says. "It's better than being vice president of the university."

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