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Who owns the water service line in Los Angeles, 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

LADWP Customer Contact Center 1-800-DIAL-DWP (1-800-342-5397)

When to call: you have an active water leak and need assistance turning your water off for emergency repairs

What happens: on request, day or night, the Department operates, for emergency purposes, the control valve on the inlet side of the meter that shuts off the water supply to the whole premises

Hours, after-hours and sources

Who is responsible for which part

Who to call first

LADWP Customer Contact Center

When to call: you have an active water leak and need assistance turning your water off for emergency repairs

1-800-DIAL-DWP (1-800-342-5397)

Answered: 24/7

What happens: on request, day or night, the Department operates, for emergency purposes, the control valve on the inlet side of the meter that shuts off the water supply to the whole premises

Source 1Source 2Source 3

Everything from the main to the meter is the City's property and is maintained at the Department's expense, including the part that crosses private land. Past the meter the pipe is the owner's to maintain - the Department says so on its own customer page, though its Rules only say where its side ends. This is Los Angeles's own statement.

Los Angeles
The whole service connection and the meter. The Department states that "all Service Connections, meters and valves, and housings installed by the Department or conveyed to the Department ... shall be the sole property of the City under the control of the Department, and will be maintained at the Department's expense", adding that "no rent or charge will be paid by the Department where such facilities are located on a Customer's Premises" - so crossing private ground changes nothing. A service connection is defined as the pipe "necessary to conduct water from the distribution main to the meter", and the rules state separately that "the Department shall furnish and maintain all meters".
The property owner
The pipe and plumbing from the meter to the building. The Department states the division on a water-quality page, above its guide to flushing household plumbing: "LADWP delivers safe, high quality drinking water from the distribution system to your property's water meter. Property owners are responsible for the maintenance of property pipe and plumbing to maintain the high quality of water all the way to the tap." Its Rules say only where the Department stops - "the Department's control and responsibility ends at its shut-off valve or meter" - and then disclaim liability for "burst pipes, faulty fixtures, or appliances on the Premises"; that disclaimer limits what the Department can be blamed for and is not what places the owner's side. The Rules also advise that "for convenience and safety, the Customer should provide a valve on the piping between the meter and the building". The owner's half therefore rests on a customer page, not a rule adopted by the Board, and a page can be reworded without a resolution. Note this is the opposite of the answer for the sewer lateral at the same house, which LA Sanitation says the owner is responsible for in its entirety.

What else is worth knowing

Where the meter sits on private land rather than in the parkway, the Rules still make the pipe up to it the Department's: its facilities are maintained at its expense and "no rent or charge will be paid by the Department where such facilities are located on a Customer's Premises". LADWP's leak-adjustment page says more broadly that "LADWP does not repair leaks on private property". The Rule is the Board-adopted document, but if your meter is on your land and the leak is on the street side of it, ask LADWP, citing Rule 16-W A.3, before paying for the repair.

Sources

LADWP Rules Governing Water and Electric Service

Also quoted:

Checked

What Los Angeles 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.

Los Angeles 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
744,960
Still unclassified
0 (0.00%)
Across California, 9.2% of service lines are unclassified.
Share of service lines still unclassified
  • Los Angeles0.00%
  • 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 Los Angeles' land inside the boundary it maps for the city's own water system. Measured 25 Sep 2026.
  • Classified does not mean inspected, and this system inspected less than most. Los Angeles established 5.6% 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.
Los Angeles: official site

Your other pipe: the sewer lateral

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

The property owner is responsible for maintaining and repairing the entire private sewer lateral, which the City's code defines as running through the street to the public sewer. The City offers rebates towards inspecting and repairing it.

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 Los Angeles, CA

Look up a specific address

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

Search for an address

How this compares across California