Who owns the water service line in Daly City, CA
The City maintains the service connection and draws the line at the curb rather than at the meter, which is unusual - but only while the damage is not your doing. Where the break was caused by a careless act on the premises, the bill comes back to whoever caused it. This is Daly City's own statement.
Which part of the pipe is yours
Yours from the curb 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
- Daly City
- The water system and the service connections. The code provides that "the city shall maintain and keep in repair the water system and all of the service connections", and fixes how far a service connection reaches: they run "from street mains to the inside of the curbline for water" and "shall be made by the city council in such manner as it may determine". So the length under the road and up to just inside the kerb is the City's to keep in repair, and the City is also the body that installs it.
- The property owner
- Everything on the premises, including the fittings. The code requires that "the owner of premises to which water is served or the consumer living on any such premises shall keep the service pipe, stop cocks and all appliances connected therewith on such premises in good order and repair and at his own expense". The same section closes the door on recovering from the City when that pipe fails: "no claims shall be made or allowed against the city by reason of bursting or any other disarrangement of any service pipe or any appliance connected therewith".
- What else is worth knowing
- The City's half of the bargain is conditional, and the condition is about behaviour rather than about the pipe. Section 13.04.160 makes the City responsible "provided, that the failure of such service or the injury thereto rendering repairs necessary does not result from the careless or improper act or omission on the part of the water consumer on the premises supplied with water, in which event the person causing the service to be out of repair shall pay the cost of repairing the same". So a service connection damaged by work on the property - a contractor's excavation, a tree planted over the line - is charged back, and the code adds that until it is paid "the water connections shall be discontinued until all charges, costs and unpaid bills and the cost of reconnection are paid". Two further things are worth knowing before planning work. The boundary here is the KERB, not the meter, which is where most neighbouring authorities draw it - so an answer carried over from another city will be in the wrong place. And a connection larger than five-eighths of an inch is a special connection whose cost the code puts on the consumer.
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, Daly City gives the opposite answer to the one above:
The whole pipe is yours, and the authority says so in unusually blunt terms. North San Mateo County Sanitation District, which runs the sewers for Daly City, states in its 2025 Sewer System Management Plan that it "does not own and is not responsible for maintaining neither the lower nor upper portions of sewer laterals tributary to its system". Both halves, named and disclaimed. In several neighbouring cities the lower half is the authority's; here it is not.
Your sewer lateral is yours to the main; your water line stops being yours at the curb.
Who pays for the sewer lateral in Daly City, 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.