Who owns the water service line in Sunnyvale, CA
The City supplies the water, installs the pipe from its main to the meter at its own expense, and keeps the meter as its property. Section 12.24.080(b) provides that "The city shall, at its own expense, furnish and install service pipe of suitable capacity, from its mains to the meter for service of premises abutting upon a public street, along which it has a water main", and subsection (e) puts the rest on the customer: "The consumer shall install that portion of the service from the meter to his or her premises, the expense of same to be paid by the consumer". This is Sunnyvale's own statement.
Which part of the pipe is yours
Yours from the meter to your building
Why, and what to do
Where the responsibility divides
- Sunnyvale
- The run from the main to the meter, which the City installs at its own expense, and the meter, which it owns. Section 12.24.080(c) provides that meters and appliances installed by the City "shall continue to be the property of the city, and may be repaired, replaced or removed by the city at any time". Subsection (a) places the meter, wherever practicable, "in suitable meter boxes, located in the sidewalk".
- The property owner
- Everything from the meter to the building, owned and kept by you. Section 12.24.080(e) provides that the materials the consumer furnishes for that length "will, at all times, be and remain the property of the consumer, and when necessary, will be maintained and repaired by the consumer", and section 12.24.070(b) repeats the duty for everything on the premises: owners "must keep their service pipe, stopcocks and all apparatus connected therewith on said premises in good repair at their own expense".
- What else is worth knowing
- Read the City's side for what it promises and what it does not. The code gives the City title to the meter and a right to repair it - the meter "may be repaired, replaced or removed by the city at any time" - but it never states a duty to maintain the pipe from the main to the meter, as opposed to installing it. So a leak on the street side of the meter is the City's pipe and the right place to start, but the code stops short of promising the repair. The owner's side is stated plainly, and so is damage: subsection (d) charges the consumer for damage to the City's meter or pipes "caused by the carelessness or neglect of the consumer", including from hot water or steam. Before relying on any of this, check the name on your water bill, because not every address in the city is the City's. The State's own service-area register puts a small part of the city in California Water Service's Los Altos Suburban system and another small part on the NASA Ames Research Center system at Moffett Field. If either bills you, its own rules govern your service rather than these sections.
What Sunnyvale has told the State
Federal rules required every community water system to inventory its service lines and publish the result. These are the figures this one filed.
Sunnyvale has classified more of its service lines than most of California: 0.00% of its lines are unclassified, against 9.2% statewide.
- 28,509
- 0 (0.00%)
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.
- Classified does not mean inspected, and this system inspected less than most. Sunnyvale established 4.0% 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 2026-09-04. They may not reflect its current inventory - the system's own page is the place to confirm anything about a specific address.
Your other pipe has a different answer
The sewer lateral leaving your property is a separate pipe, run by a separate authority, and who is responsible for it is decided separately. In many places the two answers are opposites.
Sewer lateral requirements in Sunnyvale, 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.