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Who owns the water service line in Imperial, CA

Which part of the pipe is yours

your buildingproperty linesidewalkstreetmain?
The thick length is yours. A hatched run means nobody has said where it divides.

If something’s wrong

Who to call first about the water service line

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

The documents this answer is built on

Who is responsible for which part

Imperial keeps title to water connections and meters and maintains them within the street. Section 23-3 provides that "Title to connections to the water system, including meters, shall remain in the city, and the city shall maintain and repair all connections and meters existing within the street lines of the city." This is Imperial's own statement.

Imperial
The connections to the water system and the meters, which remain City property, and their maintenance and repair within the street lines.
The property owner
The code assigns the City the connections and meters within the street lines and says nothing further about the pipe beyond them. Owners must safeguard a meter on their premises and pay for damage to it.

What else is worth knowing

The City's duty is drawn at the street lines, not at the meter, so where a meter sits on private land beyond the street line the code does not say who maintains the pipe up to it - ask the City before paying for work there. One thing to check before relying on any of this: the State's register puts the City's system over about two thirds of Imperial's land; the remaining third is ground inside the city limits that no published water service area reaches - not a rival utility, and not necessarily unserved. Check the name on your water bill.

Sources

Imperial City Code chapter 23, Water

Checked

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.
  • 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.
Imperial: official site

Your other pipe: the sewer lateral

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

Imperial puts the whole sewer service line on the owner, from the house to the main. Section 18-11 provides that "Individual sewer users are responsible for maintenance of individual service lines to the main line", and section 18-10 that the "Property owner is responsible for sewer service connections from the sewer service lateral from house to the main line."

One of the two authorities does not say where its side ends, so the two answers cannot be compared here.

Same trench, separate authorities, decided separately.

Who pays for the sewer lateral in Imperial, CA

Look up a specific address

This page describes what applies to properties in Imperial 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