Who owns the water service line in Torrance, CA
Whichever utility bills you in Torrance, the pipe from the main to the meter is theirs. Torrance Municipal Water's own code has the service "installed from the distribution main to a point adjacent to the nearest property line" and says it "shall remain the property of and shall be maintained, repaired and renewed by the City"; California Water Service, which serves portions of the city, states in its tariff that the service pipe, curb stop, meter and meter box are the utility's property. Your side starts after the meter. This is Torrance'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, including the fitting where it joins
Why, and what to do
Where the responsibility divides
- Torrance
- The run from the main to the meter, on both utilities' own documents - though they do not promise the same thing about it. Torrance Municipal Code section 76.2.3 provides that on payment of the installation charge "water service including meter, shall be installed from the distribution main to a point adjacent to the nearest property line", and that this "shall remain the property of and shall be maintained, repaired and renewed by the City"; repairs or replacements "made necessary by any act of the customer or any agent thereof shall be charged to and collected from the customer". California Water Service, which serves portions of Torrance, states in its CPUC tariff 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" - a statement of ownership, which its tariff does not extend into a statement about repairs.
- The property owner
- The piping from the meter onward, whichever utility serves you. California Water Service makes it a condition of service that the customer "furnish and lay the necessary piping to make the connection from the service connection to the place of consumption" and "keep such piping in good repair", and puts it to householders as "property owners are responsible for repairs to plumbing on their side of the water meter" - a page that also says "Cal Water is responsible for repairs within the distribution system", without saying whether the pipe running to your meter is part of that system, so put a street-side leak to them on the strength of that sentence. Torrance Municipal Water reaches the same place from the other direction: its service, including the meter, runs only as far as "a point adjacent to the nearest property line", so everything past that is the property owner's.
- What else is worth knowing
- Find out which utility bills you, because it changes what has been promised to you rather than where the pipe divides. If you are a Torrance Municipal Water customer, the City's own code says the service to the meter is "maintained, repaired and renewed by the City" - an undertaking in an ordinance. If you are a California Water Service customer, the binding tariff says only that the service pipe, curb stop, meter and meter box are the utility's property; Cal Water's answer about repairs is on its help pages rather than in the filed tariff. Either way the divide is the meter and the run under the road is not yours. Two more things worth knowing if you are on the City system: repairs made necessary by something you or your contractor did are billed back to you under section 76.2.3, and if you want the service enlarged, moved or changed, section 76.2.4 has the Water Department do the work itself and charges you "the full cost of labor and materials involved", capped at "the maximum cost of the regular service of the type affected".
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, Torrance gives the opposite answer to the one above:
The owner keeps the lateral from twelve inches outside the building to the main, and the City says the joint is theirs too: owners are responsible for their lateral "including the connection to the public sewer main". Torrance then does something no other city here does - it splits the permit at the property line, so a repair that crosses it needs two.
Your sewer lateral is yours to the main, fitting included; your water line stops being yours at the meter.
Who pays for the sewer lateral in Torrance, 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.