Who owns the water service line in Santa Clarita, CA
Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency "owns, operates and maintains the Service Connection, up to and including the meter", and the property owner has the Customer Service Line after it. The divide is written to the fitting - the outlet of the shut-off valve just past the meter. Note that you pay for the service lateral and meter and the Agency still owns them; what that buys is the Agency keeping them up afterwards. This is Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency'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 under the road
Why, and what to do
Where the responsibility divides
- Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency
- Everything from the main to the meter, owned and operated and maintained. The Agency's Customer Service Policy states that "the Agency owns, operates and maintains the Service Connection, up to and including the meter", and defines that Service Connection as "the Agency's facilities including pipe, fittings, meter, meter box and check valve or backflow prevention device and shut-off valve, extending from the Agency's potable or recycled water main to the outlet of the shut-off valve downstream of the meter". Section 5.4.2 adds that "the service lateral, meter, and meter box or other facilities furnished at the Customer's expense, whether located wholly or partially upon a Customer's premises, are the property of the Agency".
- The property owner
- The Customer Service Line, which starts just past the meter. The Agency defines it as "the Customer's facilities including pipe, fittings and appurtenances extending from the outlet of the shut-off valve downstream of the Agency's meter, check valve or backflow prevention device", and section 13.10 puts the duty plainly: the customer "shall, at its own risk and expense, furnish, install and keep in good and safe condition all of the equipment on the Customer's side of the meter that may be required for receiving, controlling, applying and utilizing water".
- What else is worth knowing
- Two things are worth knowing before you pay anybody. The first is that paying for the pipe does not make it yours: section 5.4.2 provides that the service lateral, meter and meter box "furnished at the Customer's expense" are the Agency's property. What that buys you is section 13.1.4, under which the Agency then operates and maintains them - which is more than several neighbouring utilities undertake for the same arrangement. The second is where exactly the divide falls. It is not simply "the meter": the Agency's side runs to "the outlet of the shut-off valve downstream of the meter", and the word "shut-off valve" also appears in the Agency's definition of the customer-owned appurtenances "downstream from the meter, but not including the meter". Read together they meet at one point and do not overlap, but if your leak is at a valve within a foot of the meter, ask the Agency which valve it is before instructing a plumber. Note also that your sewer lateral in Santa Clarita is the opposite answer - under the Los Angeles County code the City adopted, the owner maintains the house lateral from the property line to the main, so the run under the street is yours there and the Agency's here.
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, Santa Clarita gives the opposite answer to the one above:
Santa Clarita's sewer law is Los Angeles County's: the City "adopted ... by reference, as a sanitary sewer and industrial waste ordinance of the City of Santa Clarita ... Los Angeles County Code, Title 20, Utilities, Division 2". That code puts the length under the street on you. "All house laterals ... and appurtenances thereto ... shall be maintained by the owner of the property served in a safe and sanitary condition" - and a house lateral, as County Code section 20.20.130 defines it, is the piping in the street running from your property line to the main.
Your sewer lateral is yours to the main; your water line stops being yours at the meter.
Who pays for the sewer lateral in Santa Clarita, 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.