Who owns the water service line in Palo Alto, CA
The City's utility maintains the water service "from, and including, the Water Meter located near the street curb, up to and including the Water main", and everything downstream of the meter is yours. That is the opposite end of the run from your sewer lateral, which the same utility makes yours all the way to the main unless there is a City cleanout. One more thing worth knowing before you remodel: a project over $200,000 can oblige you to replace the City's own side of the service. This is Palo Alto's own statement.
Which part of the pipe is yours
Yours from the meter to your building
Why, and what to doYours from the cleanout to your building — if certain conditions are met
Why, and what to do
Where the responsibility divides
- Palo Alto
- The service from the meter out to the main, and the distribution system beyond it. Rule and Regulation 21 states that "CPAU is responsible for the maintenance of the Water Service from, and including, the Water Meter located near the street curb, up to and including the Water main and the remainder of the City's Water Distribution System". The meter itself is on the utility's side of that sentence.
- The property owner
- Everything on the house side of the meter, and the meter's housing. Rule and Regulation 21 states that "the Customer is responsible for maintenance of the on-site Water Distribution System downstream of the Water Meter in accordance with the Palo Alto Municipal Code Chapter 16.08, including the Water Meter vaults and boxes".
- What else is worth knowing
- The meter is the line, but three things change what it costs you. If your property is on a private street, in a subdivision or served across an easement, "CPAU's responsibility is limited to the Water mains and Water Meters in the Public Utility Easement" - the handover is still the meter, but what the utility will reach is narrower, and where its use of the easement damages common areas Rule 21 says it is "the responsibility of the owner or Home Owner's Association, not the City, to restore the affected portions". If a repair is needed because of your own breach of the code or the rules, expenses "are the responsibility of the violator, and must be paid to CPAU before CPAU performs any maintenance required as a result of the violation". And building work can put the utility's own side of the meter on your bill: where a service 2 inches or smaller is not polyethylene or copper, a new structure or an addition over the value threshold obliges you to replace it "from the main up to and including the Water Meter box".
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, Palo Alto says:
It depends on whether you have a City sewer cleanout, and where it is. With one, Palo Alto owns and maintains the lateral "from the Wastewater Main up to and including the first City Sewer Cleanout" and you own the rest to your building. Without one - or if it is inaccessible, or if the cleanout is yours and sits "more than 5 feet behind the property line" - you own "the entire Sewer Lateral between the City's Wastewater Main and the building".
Your sewer lateral is yours to the cleanout; your water line stops being yours at the meter.
Who pays for the sewer lateral in Palo Alto, 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.