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Who pays for the sewer lateral in Signal Hill, CA

Which part of the pipe is yours

your buildingproperty linesidewalkstreetmain
The thick length is yours.

If something’s wrong

If a repair needs a permit or an inspection

  • Before work on the pipe · Permit

    Who issues it:
    City of Signal Hill city engineer
    What it covers:
    excavating or tunnelling under any street or other public way in the city, which is where the adopted County code puts the lateral

    Signal Hill Municipal Code section 12.08.020 provides that no person, other than the City's own officers and employees at work, "shall excavate in any street, avenue, court, alley, place, sidewalk, or other highway in the city without first obtaining from the city engineer or his authorized representative a written permit so to do", and section 12.08.010 defines excavation as the breaking or cutting of any street surface and "the tunneling under any street". The City's sewer ordinance, borrowed from the County, puts the house lateral under the street on the owner, so this is the permit an owner needs to reach their own pipe, whether the trench is open or tunnelled.

The repair rule in full, with its sources

No rule on file here is specific to selling, buying, remodelling or adding a unit; that does not mean none exists.

Who to call first about the sewer lateral

BelowGrid has no first-call guidance on file from Signal Hill about the sewer lateral.

Signal Hill: official site(opens in a new tab)The documents this answer is built on

Who is responsible for which part

Signal Hill writes no sewer ownership rule of its own and borrows the County's. Section 13.06.010 of its municipal code adopts Division 2 of Title 20 of the Los Angeles County Code, "as adopted, amended and in effect on July 27, 1989", as the Sanitary Sewer and Industrial Waste Code of the city. 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, and the City's own answer to the question is short: "Sewer laterals are the responsibility of the property owner."

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 within the street or right-of-way, 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", adding that such sewers "are generally eight inches or more in diameter" - 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 the City's public works questions page takes the whole lateral as the owner's without drawing any line: "Sewer laterals are the responsibility of the property owner." Section 13.06.020 renames the parties in the borrowed text and 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, and the amendments in section 13.06.030 do not touch sections 20.24.080 or 20.20.130, so the County's assignment reaches the pipe as written. The adoption is frozen at the County text of 27 July 1989; the owner's duty in section 20.24.080 comes from the County's 1952 sewer ordinance and its one later amendment, a 1989 ordinance on septic tank effluent pumping systems, precedes that date. The City's utilities page names another body for the system itself: "The sewer system that serves the City of Signal Hill is owned and maintained by the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County". The City's oil and gas code once speaks of connecting to "any city sewer lateral or main" (section 16.12.100), a permit sentence for oil operations that assigns no maintenance.

Sources

Signal Hill Municipal Code section 13.06.010, Adoption of county code

Also quoted:

Checked

What the rules say

Most relevant if you are selling or buying

No rule on file here is specific to selling or buying; that does not mean none exists.

Also in force here

  • Before work on the pipePermit
    Who issues it:
    City of Signal Hill city engineer
    What it covers:
    excavating or tunnelling under any street or other public way in the city, which is where the adopted County code puts the lateral

    Signal Hill Municipal Code section 12.08.020 provides that no person, other than the City's own officers and employees at work, "shall excavate in any street, avenue, court, alley, place, sidewalk, or other highway in the city without first obtaining from the city engineer or his authorized representative a written permit so to do", and section 12.08.010 defines excavation as the breaking or cutting of any street surface and "the tunneling under any street". The City's sewer ordinance, borrowed from the County, puts the house lateral under the street on the owner, so this is the permit an owner needs to reach their own pipe, whether the trench is open or tunnelled.

    What to do: Before digging in the street to reach a house lateral, apply to the Signal Hill city engineer for an excavation permit and measure the trench area, since the deposit is priced by the square foot. Keep the permit paperwork for a year after the job - the permittee answers for the patched surface for that long. If the lateral is leaking, the excavation may start first, but the permit application has to be in before the trench is backfilled.

    Why this matters

    The deposit is set in the code rather than left to discretion. Section 12.08.070 asks for a cash deposit of "Seventy-five cents for each square foot of area of proposed excavation in or under any type of pavement or surfacing material", fifteen cents a square foot where there is no pavement, and "The minimum deposit shall be twenty-five dollars and the maximum shall be one thousand dollars"; a one thousand dollar surety bond may be posted instead. The cost that outlasts the job is in section 12.08.190: the street surface is replaced "at the sole cost and expense of the permittee, who shall maintain the same for a period of one year from the date of the completion of the work". Permit and inspection fees under section 12.08.090 are set by council resolution. For a leak, section 12.08.250 allows the dig to start first: "Should a leak occur in any pipeline laid in or near a public street, alley, or way, an excavation may be made for the purpose of repairing the pipeline without first obtaining an excavation permit from the city engineer", with the permit applied for "as soon as is practicable thereafter and in any event before any backfilling is done".

    Current wording dates from · Checked

    Signal Hill Municipal Code section 12.08.020, Permit required

    Also quoted:

What this page cannot tell you

  • 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.

Who governs and serves this area

Jurisdiction
Signal Hill (municipality)
Sewer service
No map of sewer providers is held here. BelowGrid cannot say which sewer provider serves an individual address.

How this compares to neighbouring cities

1 of the 8 nearest cities draws the line somewhere else. Each authority publishes only its own rule.

Distances are approximate, in a straight line between the places’ centres.

Compare the rules city by city

Your other pipe: the water service line

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 Signal Hill

Nearby cities and further reading

Look up a specific address

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

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