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Who owns the water service line in Pasadena, CA

Which part of the pipe is yours

your buildingproperty linesidewalkstreetmain
The thick length is yours. A dashed marker means the position depends on your property — see below.

If something’s wrong

Who to call first about the water service line

BelowGrid has no first-call guidance on file from Pasadena about the water service line.

The documents this answer is built on

Who is responsible for which part

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.

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. This answer applies inside the area the State maps for Pasadena Water and Power's own water system, including addresses outside Pasadena's city limits that it serves; addresses the State maps to another water system such as Kinneloa Irrigation District's, Las Flores Water Company's and Lincoln Avenue Water Company's are left out, and so is city land the State does not map to Pasadena Water and Power's own water system.

Sources

Pasadena Water and Power, Water Leak Assistance Program

Also quoted:

Checked

What Pasadena 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.

Pasadena 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
38,120
Still unclassified
0 (0.00%)
Across California, 9.2% of service lines are unclassified.
Share of service lines still unclassified
  • Pasadena0.00%
  • 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.
  • This answer applies inside the area the State maps for Pasadena's own water system, which does not follow the city limits: some addresses in the city are served by another supplier, and some outside it are served by the city. An address search checks which side an address is on.
  • The State's service area map puts effectively all of Pasadena's 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. Pasadena established 1.4% 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.
Pasadena: official site

Your other pipe: the sewer lateral

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.

Same trench, separate authorities, decided separately.

Who pays for the sewer lateral in Pasadena, CA

Look up a specific address

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

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How this compares across California