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Who owns the water service line in Daly City, 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 Daly City about the water service line.

The documents this answer is built on

Who is responsible for which part

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.

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. The State's register also puts a small part of Daly City in California Water Service's South San Francisco system's service area; if California Water Service's South San Francisco system bills you, its own rules apply.

Sources

Daly City Municipal Code chapter 13.04, Water Service

Checked

What Daly City 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.

Daly City 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
21,770
Still unclassified
0 (0.00%)
Across California, 9.2% of service lines are unclassified.
Share of service lines still unclassified
  • Daly City0.00%
  • 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 97% of Daly City's land inside the boundary it maps for the city's own water system. Within the same city limits it also maps "CALIFORNIA WATER SERVICE-S SAN FRANCISCO" (3%). Measured 25 Sep 2026.
  • Classified does not mean inspected, and this system inspected less than most. Daly City established 7.1% of its classifications by field inspection, against 22% across California; 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.
Daly City: official site

Your other pipe: the sewer lateral

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.

Same trench, separate authorities, decided separately.

Who pays for the sewer lateral in Daly City, CA

Look up a specific address

This page describes what applies to properties in Daly City 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