Who owns the water service line in Pasadena, CA
Pasadena Water and Power owns and maintains the water system "up to and including the water meter", and responsibility transfers where your private property connects to it. But if you ask PWP to replace the service lateral rather than repair it, the code makes you "pay the department's actual cost" - so the difference between reporting a fault and requesting a replacement is the difference between their bill and yours. This is Pasadena's own statement.
Which part of the pipe is yours
Yours from the meter to your building — if certain conditions are met
Why, and what to doYours all the way to the main under the road
Why, and what to do
Where the responsibility divides
- Pasadena
- The distribution system and the service up to and including the meter, owned as well as maintained. PWP states that it "has ownership and maintenance responsibilities for the water distribution system up to and including the water meter", and that "the point at which the customer's private property is connected to the water meter is the location at which responsibility transfers to the customer". The code says the same of the meter itself: "all meters installed by the water division shall remain at all times the property of the water division and shall be maintained, repaired and replaced by said division" - except where an adjustment or repair is "rendered necessary by negligence, carelessness, or damage by the consumer", which the consumer pays for.
- The property owner
- Everything on their side of the meter. The code calls a customer's interior water pipes "those water pipes on the customer's side of the water meter", and PWP says "the customer or property owner is responsible for ensuring that all water structures on the owner's property are kept in good repair and free of leaks". A leak wasteful enough to breach the City's water waste ordinance must be fixed within the period that ordinance sets, or "water service to the property shall be shut off".
- What decides which applies
- Two things decide who pays, and neither is about where the pipe is. The first is what you ask for: PWP owns and maintains the service up to the meter, but section 13.20.060 says that "in the event the customer requests a service lateral replacement, the customer shall pay the department's actual cost" - and no figure for that is published, so ask what it is before you ask for the work. The second is how your property is served. The leak-programme page puts the handover at the meter, which is the ordinary single-family case; but for sites with individual meters on private property PWP says its "responsibility of service ends at the property line", and where a third party submeters, its responsibility "ends at the master meter". If you are in a condominium, duplex or small apartment building, that is the sentence that applies to you rather than the simple one. Note also that damage to the meter caused by the consumer, their family or anyone employed by them is billed back, and that a wasteful leak on your side has a shut-off attached to it, not just a bill.
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, Pasadena gives the opposite answer to the one above:
The house sewer is the owner's from 24 inches outside the building to the main - and Pasadena closes the usual loophole by saying that a public sewer "does not include house sewer". The catch is in section 13.24.210: replace any part of the run between the curb and the main and you must replace all of it, to new-work standards.
Your sewer lateral is yours to the main; your water line stops being yours at the meter.
Who pays for the sewer lateral in Pasadena, 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.