Who owns the water service line in Downey, CA
Downey's Water Division owns your meter and keeps it up - the code says meters "shall remain at all times the property of the Division and shall be maintained, repaired, and replaced by the Division". Your side starts there: you are responsible "for the cost of any water lost through leaks or defective lines between the meter and the point of use". What the code never says is who repairs the pipe between the main and that meter, so that is the question to ask before you need the answer. This is Downey'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
- Downey
- The meter, owned and kept up, and the service line as far as installing it. The Municipal Code provides that "all meters installed by the Division shall remain at all times the property of the Division and shall be maintained, repaired, and replaced by the Division". The Division also lays the pipe: "the service shall be installed from the nearest water distribution main to a point as close to the property line as is reasonable", and "the service line from the distribution main to the meter shall be no less than one inch in diameter". The code states no ownership of that service line and no duty to repair it.
- The property owner
- From the meter to the building, with one caution about how the code says it and one valve you must install yourself. The code makes each applicant "responsible for the cost of any water lost through leaks or defective lines between the meter and the point of use" - which puts the divide at the meter and puts the cost of lost water on you, and which does not separately state who pays to repair the pipe on your side. It also requires that "the consumer shall install, for his ordinary usage and at his own expense, a shut-off valve on the property side of the meter".
- What else is worth knowing
- One half of this is settled and one is not, and the difference is worth knowing before you ring a plumber. What the code settles: the cost of water lost through "leaks or defective lines between the meter and the point of use" is yours. Read that clause for what it says - it allocates the cost of the WATER, and it does not separately say who pays to repair that length of pipe. It is still the clearest thing the code says about your side, and it puts the divide at the meter. The Division installs the service "to a point as close to the property line as is reasonable", though the code does not say where the meter itself is set. Also settled: the meter itself is the Division's to maintain, repair and replace - unless the damage came from "negligence, carelessness, or damage by the consumer, or any member of his family or anyone employed by him", in which case you pay for it and the water can be shut off until you do. Not settled: who repairs the service line between the main and the meter. The Division installs it and the code says nothing further, so ask the Water Division who is repairing it before you engage anybody. And know which valve is yours: "all shut-off valves shall be installed by and for the use of the Division" and the consumer "shall not use or molest" them, but you are required to install your own on the property side of the meter. That one is the one to find before a leak rather than during one.
What Downey has told the State
Federal rules required every community water system to inventory its service lines and publish the result. These are the figures this one filed.
Downey has classified more of its service lines than most of California: 0.00% of its lines are unclassified, against 9.2% statewide.
- 23,358
- 0 (0.00%)
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.
- 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 2026-09-04. They may not reflect its current inventory - the system's own page is the place to confirm anything about a specific address.
Your other pipe has a different answer
For the sewer lateral, Downey says:
Downey is unusually direct about this, and says both halves in one place. Section 7240 of the Downey Municipal Code provides that "the Director of Public Works has the responsibility for the maintenance of the City's public sewer facilities, including main line sewers, pumping stations, manholes, and terminal cleanouts", and that "the Los Angeles County Sanitation District No. 2 has the responsibility of maintaining all trunk sewers in the City which are under the District's jurisdiction". Section 7240.2 then takes the other side: "all house laterals, industrial connection sewers, and appurtenances thereto, now existing or hereafter constructed, shall be maintained in a safe and sanitary condition by the owner of the property served". Section 7214.14 defines the house lateral as "that part of the sewer piping within the street or right-of-way which extends from the property or sewer right-of-way line to a connection with the main line sewer", so the length the City puts on the owner is the length under the road.
Your sewer lateral is yours to the main; your water line stops being yours at the meter.
Who pays for the sewer lateral in Downey, 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.