Who owns the water service line in Moraga, CA
EBMUD draws its line more precisely than any other water utility here: it repairs "leaks on the street side of the meter and ... the meter itself, including the threads on the customer's side of the meter", and everything past those threads is the customer's. In most of the East Bay that is the opposite shape to the sewer answer, where the owner's lateral runs all the way under the road to the main. This is East Bay Municipal Utility District'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, including the fitting where it joins
Why, and what to do
Where the responsibility divides
- East Bay Municipal Utility District
- Everything to the meter, and the meter down to the threads on your side of it. EBMUD states that it "is responsible for the repair of leaks on the street side of the meter and for repairing the meter itself, including the threads on the customer's side of the meter", and that it "repairs leaks to its water meters and water mains". No cleanout condition, prior inspection or programme membership is attached to that.
- The property owner
- Everything on the customer's side of the meter. EBMUD states that "customers are responsible for maintaining and repairing the line that runs from the meter to their residence or building", and itemises what that covers: "leaks on the customer's side of the meter, including the pipe between the meter and the building, the irrigation system, or indoor plumbing, are the responsibility of the customer".
- What else is worth knowing
- The threads are the line, and it is worth knowing because that is exactly where a leak tends to show and where two plumbers will disagree. EBMUD keeps the meter and the threads on your side of it; the pipe that screws on to those threads is yours. Two further things. Your two pipes divide in very different places across most of the East Bay: the water line stops being yours at the meter near the boundary, while the sewer lateral commonly stays yours all the way under the road to the main, so a quotation for "the line to the street" means different work depending on which pipe is meant - check your own city's sewer page rather than assuming. And a handful of East Bay addresses are not EBMUD's at all even inside these cities: Alameda Point in Alameda, Wildwood Acres Resort in Lafayette and the East Bay Regional Park District's Piedmont Stables in Oakland are separate water systems on the State's own register, so check whose name is on your water bill before relying on any of this. And if you are offered a service line protection plan on the strength of EBMUD's own page, read who is selling it: EBMUD points customers at "optional coverage plans, offered by SLWA Insurance Services (SLWA), an independent company" and says plainly that it "does not endorse any coverage provider". That is insurance from a third party, not a utility scheme.
Where else this answer applies
East Bay Municipal Utility District also supplies 6 other places with a page here, and the statement above is the same one that governs them: Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, Danville, Oakland and Richmond. Each of them settles the sewer lateral separately, often under a different authority from this one.
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, Central Contra Costa Sanitary District gives the opposite answer to the one above:
The property owner is responsible for the whole lateral, from the building to Central San's sewer line in the street - and the District's code puts the fitting at the main inside that. The one thing it pays for is a reconnection its own work on the public sewer makes necessary.
Your sewer lateral is yours to the main, fitting included; your water line stops being yours at the meter.
Who pays for the sewer lateral in Moraga, 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.