Who owns the water service line in Sutter Creek, CA
Which part of the pipe is yours
Yours from the meter to your building
Why, and what to do
If something’s wrong
Who to call first about the water service line
Who is responsible for which part
Amador Water Agency owns and maintains the service up to the meter setter, and the owner has everything past it. Its Water Code provides that "The Agency shall be responsible for operating, maintaining, and replacing all portions of the water system up to the Point of Responsibility to the customer", and that "The Customer's water line from the Point of Responsibility shall be installed, owned and maintained by the Customer". This is Amador Water Agency's own statement.
- Amador Water Agency
- All portions of the water system up to the Point of Responsibility, operated, maintained and replaced by the Agency: "The Service Connection, Meter box and Meter shall be owned, operated, and maintained by the Agency." For a metered service that point is "The connection point of the Customer's system at the outlet side of the Meter Setter."
- The property owner
- The customer's water line from the Point of Responsibility, which the Code defines as "the physical point at which an Owner's responsibility for all conditions, maintenance, repairs, use and replacement of water service facilities begins, and the Agency's responsibility ends."
What else is worth knowing
Sources
Amador Water Agency Water Code (amended and restated 27 October 2022)What Amador Water Agency 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.
Amador Water Agency has classified less of its network than most of California: 44.7% of its service lines are still unclassified, against 9.2% statewide.
- 1,752
- 784 (44.7%)
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 99% of Sutter Creek's land inside the boundary it maps for Amador Water Agency. 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. Amador Water Agency established 3.1% 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
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 Sutter Creek, CALook up a specific address
This page describes what applies to properties in Sutter Creek 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.