Who owns the water service line in Selma, CA
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
If something’s wrong
Who to call first about the water service line
Who is responsible for which part
The utility owns the service pipe, the curb stop, the meter and the meter box. The customer owns the piping past the meter - and the curb stop, which folklore treats as the boundary, is expressly the utility's. This is California Water Service, Selma District's own statement.
- California Water Service, Selma District
- The utility's CPUC tariff states that "the service pipe, curb stop, meter, and meter box furnished by the utility at its own expense and located wholly or partially upon a customer's premises are the property of the utility" - so the run from the main, the fitting at the curb, and the meter itself are all the utility's, even where they sit on the customer's land.
- The property owner
- The piping from the meter onward. The tariff makes this the customer's own job as a condition of getting service: they must "furnish and lay the necessary piping to make the connection from the service connection to the place of consumption" and must "keep such piping in good repair" (section A.2.a). Cal Water puts the same line to householders in plainer words on its help page "Who is responsible for making repairs?": "Property owners are responsible for repairs to plumbing on their side of the water meter." The same page pairs that with "Cal Water is responsible for repairs within the distribution system", which does not say whether the pipe running to your meter counts as part of that system - so if the leak is on the street side of the meter, that is the sentence to put to them. One thing to check before you rely on any of it: the State's register puts California Water Service's Selma system over about four-fifths of Selma's land, and Selma High School's own small system over about 2%. The rest - a little under a fifth - is ground inside the city limits that no published water service area reaches - not a rival utility, and not necessarily unserved. Check the name on your water bill first.
Sources
California Water Service, Rule No. 16What California Water Service, Selma District 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.
California Water Service, Selma District has classified less of its network than most of California: 63.4% of its service lines are still unclassified, against 9.2% statewide.
- 6,771
- 4,294 (63.4%)
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.
- The State's service area map puts 81% of Selma's land inside the boundary it maps for California Water Service, Selma District. A share of land is not a share of homes: open space counts the same as a dense block. Measured 25 Sep 2026.
- Unclassified means nobody has established what the pipe is made of. It does not mean lead was found.
- Classified does not mean inspected, and this system inspected less than most. California Water Service, Selma District established 0.0% 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.
Your other pipe: the sewer lateral
For the sewer lateral, Selma-Kingsburg-Fowler County Sanitation District gives the opposite answer to the one above:
In Selma and Kingsburg the lateral is split at the property line for repairs, but the owner keeps the whole pipe clean. The Selma-Kingsburg-Fowler County Sanitation District's ordinance provides that "Repair and replacement of service laterals in the public right of way is the responsibility of the District. Any maintenance and cleaning of the complete service lateral is the property owner's responsibility."
Your sewer lateral is yours to the main; your water line stops being yours at the meter.
Who pays for the sewer lateral in Selma, CALook up a specific address
This page describes what applies to properties in Selma in general. To see which authorities serve one address, and what records exist for it, search for it.
Search for an addressHow 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.