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Who owns the water service line in Burbank, CA

Which part of the pipe is yours

your buildingproperty linesidewalkstreetmain
The thick length is yours.

If something’s wrong

Who to call first about the water service line

BelowGrid has no first-call guidance on file from Burbank about the water service line.

The documents this answer is built on

Who is responsible for which part

Burbank Water and Power owns the water service line and promises to maintain it, all the way to the outlet side of your meter. Yours begins at the meter gasket. If the leak is on the street side of the meter, it is BWP's pipe and BWP's job. This is Burbank's own statement.

Burbank
Everything up to and including the meter, and this is a promise rather than a right: BWP "will furnish and install and, thereafter, maintain all meters, pipes, equipment, and materials for the water service and title to all such meters, pipe, equipment, and materials shall remain for all time at BWP". The utility's own rules then say exactly where that stops - for an ordinary house connection, "water service shall end at the outlet side of the meter; the customer's ownership and responsibility begins with the meter gasket".
The property owner
The pipework from the meter gasket into the building. BWP puts the customer's duty and the handover in one sentence: "The Customer shall be responsible for the expense of installation and maintenance of the lines on the Customer's side of the property line connecting to BWP's service at the meter's outlet".

What else is worth knowing

The curb is not the line here, and it is worth knowing why anyone would think it was. BWP's rules do say that "the water service will end at the curb or property line at the option of BWP" - but that sentence is about where BWP's buried pipeline stops running, and the same sentence puts the customer's expense at "the meter's outlet". The meter, its box and the fittings that connect it are added on top of that run and are BWP's too, so a leak between the kerb and the meter is on BWP's side of the line even though the pipe has passed the kerb. If your meter sits inside your property line rather than out by the street, that does not move the boundary either: BWP's rules allow the box to be placed on your premises where a position on the City side is not practicable. One genuine exception, and it will not apply to a house: for meters of three inches and larger in underground installations, BWP's responsibility ends at the outlet side of the vault instead. Domestic services of three quarters of an inch up to two inches take the meter-gasket rule. And check the name on your water bill: the State's service-area register puts part of Burbank, about 1% of its land, inside the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP)'s service area, and if LADWP bills you, its own rules govern your service rather than BWP's.

Sources

Burbank Water and Power, Rules and Regulations for Utility Service

Also quoted:

Checked

What Burbank reported to the State about service-line materials

Federal rules required every community water system to inventory its service lines and publish the result. These are the figures this one filed.

The inventory records what each line is made of: lead, galvanized requiring replacement, non-lead, or lead status unknown. “Still unclassified” counts the lines whose material has not been identified. It does not mean they are lead.

Burbank has classified more of its service lines than most of California: 0.00% of its lines are unclassified, against 9.2% statewide.

Service lines reported
25,745
Still unclassified
0 (0.00%)
Across California, 9.2% of service lines are unclassified.
Share of service lines still unclassified
  • Burbank0.00%
  • California9.2%

What this page cannot 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.
  • The State's service area map puts effectively all of Burbank's land inside the boundary it maps for the city's own water system. Within the same city limits it also maps "LOS ANGELES-CITY, DEPT. OF WATER & POWER" (1%). Measured 25 Sep 2026.
  • Classified does not mean inspected. Across California only 22% of service lines were established by field inspection; most of the rest come from records, the year of construction, or a predictive model.
  • These figures were submitted to the State by the water system itself and were read on 4 Sep 2026. They may not reflect its current inventory - ask the water system to confirm anything about a specific address.
Burbank: official site

Your other pipe: the sewer lateral

For the sewer lateral, Burbank gives the opposite answer to the one above:

The property owner maintains the building sewer all the way to the public sewer, and the City's definitions put the portion under the street on the owner's side. Where a City parkway tree's roots crushed the pipe, the City may reimburse the repair - but only with permits and an inspection before the damaged pipe is removed.

Your sewer lateral is yours to the main; your water line stops being yours at the meter.

Same trench, separate authorities, decided separately.

Who pays for the sewer lateral in Burbank, CA

Look up a specific address

This page describes what applies to properties in Burbank in general. To see which authorities serve one address, and what records exist for it, search for it.

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How this compares across California