Opinion ID: 2285907
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Constitutionality of application of the Act to one who only subdivides.

Text: Lakesites does not deny the power of the State to act properly under the police power to protect the environment but urges us that the application of the Act to one who merely subdivides is constitutionally forbidden. It argues that a remedial Act must be designed and applied rationally and reasonably to achieve the purposes for which the Act was devised. The evil to be avoided, the appellant contends, is the damaging impact of the development upon the environment and the impact occurs and the damage is sustained only with the construction and occupation of the premises not when the land is only subdivided on plans and the lots are sold. Until such activity creating the impact occurs on the land, the Appellant argues, there is no burden or impact which can affect the environment and so the application of the Act to a mere subdivider as a prerequisite to his selling his land is not directly related to the Act's purpose. It is true that the Act and its application under the police power must have a clear, real and substantial relation to the purpose of the Act. `In order that a statute may be sustained as an exercise of the police power, the courts must be able to see that the enactment has for its object the prevention of some offense or manifest evil or the preservation of the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare, that there is some clear, real, and substantial connection between the assumed purpose of the enactment and the actual provisions thereof, and that the latter do in some plain, appreciable, and appropriate manner tend toward the accomplishment of the object for which the power is exercised.' State v. Union Oil Co. of Maine, 151 Me. 438, 447, 120 A.2d 708, 712 (1956), quoting from 16 C.J.S. Constitutional Law § 195, at 940. In our opinion such a connection between the purpose of the Act and its application to the subdivider is clear and reasonable. We have concluded earlier in this opinion that the Legislature intended to empower the Commission to prevent ecological damage before it occurs rather than to permit the occurrence of harm which can then be cured only at great public expenseif at all. It is not unreasonable to place upon the subdivider who plans the number, size and location of the lots to be offered for sale the responsibility for avoiding an inevitable large scale ecological calamity. The subdividing for sale is the first step in a commercial residential development and the Legislature reasonably concluded that the public welfare requires that control be exercised through the subdivider rather than attempting it through (in this case) 90 different purchasers whose properties can perhaps never at that later pointbecause of sheer weight and concentration of numbers avoid environmental misadventure.