Who owns the water service line in Anaheim, CA
The City owns the water service line, the curb stop and the meter - even where they sit on your land, and even though for an ordinary house connection you are the one who pays to put them in. What is yours starts just past the meter outlet. This is Anaheim's own statement.
Which part of the pipe is yours
Yours from the meter to your building
Why, and what to doYours all the way to the main under the road
Why, and what to do
Where the responsibility divides
- Anaheim
- Everything from the distribution main to and through the meter. Anaheim's water tariff defines a Service Connection as "the pipe or tubing, fittings, and valves necessary to conduct Potable Water or Recycled Water from the Distribution Main to and through the Meter", and Rule 16 makes that run the City's: "the Service pipe, curb stop, Meter, and Meter box located wholly or partially upon a Customer's Premises are the property of the Utility and may be inspected, upgraded, repaired or replaced at any time." The curb stop, which folklore treats as the boundary, is expressly the Utility's.
- The property owner
- The piping from just past the meter to the building. The tariff calls this the On-Site System and places it "downstream of the POD, which is normally downstream of the Utility's Meter tailpiece" - and laying it is a condition of getting service at all, not a favour: the customer must "furnish and lay the necessary On-Site System and piping to make the connection to the Point of Delivery" (Rule 16, section C.1).
- What else is worth knowing
- Two things here are unusual enough to be worth knowing before you dig. First, the line does not move if your meter does. Anaheim draws the boundary at the point where its piping meets yours, "normally downstream of the Utility's Meter tailpiece, regardless of the location of the Meter" - so a meter set back inside your garden rather than out at the curb does not make the pipe running to it yours. Second, paying for the pipe did not buy it. For an ordinary house connection of two inches or smaller you may install the service connection and meter yourself, or ask the City to do it - but "the Customer also has the option to request the Utility to furnish and install the Service Connection, Meter box, and Meter, at the Customer's expense", and either way Rule 16 then makes the result the Utility's property. What the tariff does not say is who pays to repair it later: it reserves the City's right to inspect, upgrade, repair or replace its own pipe, which is not the same as a promise to do so, and says nothing about the bill. If you have a leak between the street and the meter, put it to the City as the City's own pipe and ask that question directly. Your other buried pipe answers the opposite way: the same City says the entire sewer lateral is private property, including the part under the street, so under one front garden the City owns the water run and you own the sewer run.
What this does not tell you
- This describes who is responsible for which part of the pipe. It is not a record of what your own service line is made of.
- This authority's service line inventory - the record of which pipes are lead, and where - has not been matched here yet. Ask the utility for yours.
Your other pipe has a different answer
For the sewer lateral, Anaheim gives the opposite answer to the one above:
The whole sewer lateral is the property owner's, and Anaheim says so about the expensive part in the same breath as its water answer: "unlike water lines, where the City owns the portion from the street to the meter, the entire portion of a sewer lateral is private property" - including the run under the street. The City keeps the public sewer line in the street.
Your sewer lateral is yours to the main; your water line stops being yours at the meter.
Who pays for the sewer lateral in Anaheim, CAHow this compares across California
- Why your two pipes disagree — the places where the sewer and water authorities contradict each other about the run beneath the road.
- Which water systems know what is buried — how much of each California system’s network the utility can actually identify.