Who pays for the sewer lateral in Paramount, CA
Which part of the pipe is yours
Yours all the way to the main under the road
Why, and what to doYours from the meter to your building
Why, and what to do
Who is responsible for which part
Paramount writes no sewer ownership rule of its own and borrows the County's. Section 13.08.010 of its municipal code adopts "Title 20, Utilities, Division 2 of the Los Angeles County Code, commonly referred to as the Sanitary Sewers and Industrial Waste Ordinance as amended July 27, 1989" as the City's ordinance. Inside that adopted division, section 20.24.080 provides that all house laterals "shall be maintained by the owner of the property served in a safe and sanitary condition", and section 20.20.130 defines a "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 construction with the main-line sewer". The length the City's ordinance puts on the owner is the length under the road.
- The property owner
- The run under the street, named as such. Section 20.24.080 assigns house laterals to "the owner of the property served", and section 20.20.130 places that lateral in the street, from the property line to the main-line sewer. Section 20.20.220 defines the main-line sewer independently - one "in which changes in alignment and grade occur only at manholes" - so the owner's length ends where that pipe begins.
- What else is worth knowing
- The division assigns the half most owners assume is public and says nothing about the half they assume is theirs. A house lateral begins at the property line, so the run from the building out to that line is not what section 20.24.080 is about - and that silence is not the City taking it on. Section 13.08.020 renames the parties in the borrowed text, and it is worth reading for what it leaves alone. It rewrites the public sewer as "All sanitary sewers and appurtenances thereto, lying within streets or easements dedicated to the City, which are under the sole jurisdiction of the City", but it does not redefine a house lateral, so the County's assignment still reaches the pipe exactly as written. The adoption is also frozen: it takes the County text as it stood on 27 July 1989, not as the County has amended it since, and the owner's duty in section 20.24.080 dates from the County's original 1952 sewer ordinance - the same Ordinance No. 6130 that section 13.08.020 names.
What is required
Paramount Municipal Code section 12.08.010 provides that "Every person is guilty of a misdemeanor who, before obtaining a permit from the County Road Commissioner to do so" makes or causes to be made "any excavation, fill or obstruction of, or lays, constructs or repairs any curb, sidewalk, gutter, driveway, roadway surface, retaining wall, storm drain or culvert or other work of any nature in, over, along, across or through any highway". A lateral repair under the road is an excavation in the highway, and the owner's run reaches the main-line sewer there.
What to do: Ask the permit office whether the plat can be waived for your repair under section 12.16.030 before paying anyone to draw one, because a lateral repair is the case that section was written for. Keep the permit and the contractor's paperwork after the job is finished - section 12.16.090 can send a later resurfacing bill to the permittee if the trench settles. If a blockage is backing sewage into the house out of hours, the emergency route applies, and the clock for the permit starts when the office next opens.
Paramount Municipal Code chapter 12.08, Highway PermitsWhy this matters
Two provisions make this cheaper and faster for a lateral repair than for most street work, and both are easy to miss. Section 12.16.030 lets the permit officer drop a paperwork step for exactly this kind of job - "When excavations are made for service connections or for the location of trouble in conduits or pipes, or for making repairs thereto, the County Road Commissioner may waive the filing of a plat". And section 12.16.100 allows an emergency dig to start first, provided the person "obtains a permit therefor within one day after the offices of the Commissioner are first opened subsequent to the making of such excavation". The cost that outlasts the job is in section 12.16.090: if the road surface has to be repaired again because of settlement from your trench, "the permittee shall pay to the County Road Commissioner the cost of such additional repairs".
Who governs and serves this area
- Jurisdiction
- Paramount (municipality)
- Sewer service
- Not mapped. No sewer service territory covering this area has been added, so BelowGrid cannot say who serves an individual address here.
What BelowGrid cannot say yet
- No assistance or grant programme has been reviewed for this jurisdiction yet.
- No sewer service territory has been mapped for this area, so BelowGrid cannot say who serves an individual address.
How this compares to neighbouring cities
1 of the 4 nearest cities draw the line somewhere else. No single authority publishes that comparison, because each knows only about itself.
Your other pipe has a different answer
The drinking water line coming into your property is a separate pipe, run by a separate authority, and who is responsible for it is decided separately. Your sewer lateral is yours to the main; your water line stops being yours at the meter.
Who owns the water service line in ParamountLook up a specific address
A jurisdiction page describes what applies to properties in general. To see which authorities serve one address and what records exist for it, search for it.
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