Opinion ID: 2093394
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the power of the water authority

Text: The Pomperaug Valley water authority was created by Special Act of the 1969 General Assembly (Spec. Acts No. 174) as amended by Special Acts No. 72 of the 1971 General Assembly. At the time of trial, three towns (Middlebury, Southbury and Oxford) had voted to become members of the district authority so created. Basically, the aforesaid enactments grant powers to the water authority to provide, to maintain, and to construct water supply systems within the district where no such water supply system exists, or, in the alternative, to allow any town, city, borough, corporation, company, association or person intending to develop for water supply purposes a potential surface reservoir to commence such a water supply development so long as it comports with the regional supply plan of the Pomperaug Valley water authority for the member towns and so long as there exists an estimated dependable yield of more than 500,000 gallons of water per day, or one or more wells with estimated combined potential yields of more than 50 gallons per minute. Section 4 of the 1971 special act also provides that upon application made to the water authority, the developer must disclose its intention to develop a water supply system and indicate its anticipated water requirements. Section 4 goes on to provide that [w]ithin three months of being so notified the authority shall determine whether or not such water supply development would affect the regional water supply plan of the authority. If in the authority's judgment such plan will not be affected, the authority shall release such potential water supply site for development by such city, town, borough, corporation, company, association or person; otherwise the authority shall promptly select an engineer satisfactory to such city, town, borough, corporation, company, association or person to design and supervise construction of facilities to satisfy such water requirements, construction of which shall be commenced by the authority upon approval of plans by such city, town, borough, corporation, company or person, the costs thereof to be allocated between the authority and such city, town, borough, corporation, company, association or person as provided in the rules and regulations of the authority. (Emphasis added.) The act further provides that failure of the authority to act within the prescribed time limit shall constitute an approval for development of the site or well field by the city, town, borough, corporation, company, association, or person concerned. The water authority by virtue of the special act is a municipal corporation. Windham Community Memorial Hospital v. Willimantic, 166 Conn. 113, 121, 348 A.2d 651 (1974); Sachem's Head Property Owners' Assn. v. Guilford, 112 Conn. 515, 517, 152 A. 877 (1931). As a creature of the state it possesses no inherent power of its own. Pepin v. Danbury, 171 Conn. 74, 83, 368 A.2d 88 (1976). It can exercise only such powers as are expressly granted or necessarily implied to enable it to carry into effect the objects and purposes of its creation. Board of Police Commissioners v. White, 171 Conn. 553, 559, 370 A.2d 1070 (1976). The water authority is an administrative agency which, under the special act, is granted certain powers over the water supply within the area subject to its jurisdiction. Anyone proposing a water supply plan which could affect the water authority's regional water supply plan must first submit such plan to the authority for comparison. This provision presupposes the existence of such a regional plan. To hold otherwise, to permit an administrative agency to develop an ad hoc plan as a yardstick against which to measure any given proposal, is to substitute whimsy for sound judgment. RK Development Corporation v. Norwalk, 156 Conn. 369, 377, 242 A.2d 781 (1968). Giving an administrative agency such absolute power could deprive a landowner of his property, without due process of law. Id.; Helbig v. Zoning Commission, 185 Conn. 294, 310, 440 A.2d 940 (1981). Although due process is not intended to hold administrative agencies under a short leash, it is designed to restrain them from roaming at will over the adjudicative landscape. To avoid such constitutional problems, statutes sometimes specifically preclude an administrative agency from exercising its statutory powers until it adopts appropriate regulations to govern its doings. Finn v. Planning & Zoning Commission, 156 Conn. 540, 543, 244 A.2d 391 (1968); Beach v. Planning & Zoning Commission, 141 Conn. 79, 83, 103 A.2d 814 (1954). But even in the absence of a specific provision to that effect, because of the constitutional implications, a statute will be construed as embodying such provision unless the terms of the statute preclude such requirement. Grega v. Warden, 178 Conn. 207, 210, 423 A.2d 873 (1979). Applying this principle to the present case, we hold that the water authority is not empowered to act on applications for water supply plans until it first publishes its own regional water supply plan. The trial court's conclusion that the plaintiffs were not required at this time to submit to the authority their recharge basin proposal was therefore correct. This being so, it is of no significance whether the trial court's grounds for this conclusion were also correct. See Favorite v. Miller, 176 Conn. 310, 317, 407 A.2d 974 (1978).