Who owns the water service line in Victorville, CA
Victorville Water District keeps the water pipe from the main to your property line, meter included - the code says that service connection "shall be maintained by the district", and puts the meter "in the parkway area". Your side starts at the property line: "all pipes and fixtures extending or lying beyond the property line or right-of-way shall be installed and maintained by the owner". That is a shorter run than in most California cities. This is Victorville's own statement.
Which part of the pipe is yours
Yours from your property line to your building
Why, and what to doYours from your property line to your building
Why, and what to do
Where the responsibility divides
- Victorville
- The service connection from the main to the property line, meter and all, owned as well as maintained. Victorville Municipal Code section 10.04.040 provides that "the service connection extending from the water main to the property line and including the meter, meter box, and curb cock or wheel valve shall be maintained by the district", and that "meters will be installed in the parkway area, and shall be owned by the district". The code adds that "meters are the property of the district and are to be installed and operated only by authorized district personnel", and that "all facilities installed by the district on private property for the purpose of rendering water service shall remain the property of the district and may be maintained, repaired or replaced by the district without consent or interference of the owner or occupant of the property".
- The property owner
- Everything past the property line. The code states that "all pipes and fixtures extending or lying beyond the property line or right-of-way shall be installed and maintained by the owner of the property". Because the meter sits in the parkway and the district's service connection runs to the property line, the owner's pipe begins at the boundary rather than out at the meter.
- What else is worth knowing
- Know which valve is yours, and know that your run is shorter here than elsewhere. The code defines a "customer's service valve" as "a valve independent of the district's facilities located in the customer's piping, the operation of which will control the entire water supply from the meter" - so as in several other cities there may be two valves near the meter and only one is yours to operate. Two further things worth knowing. First, if you are comparing a quotation against advice written for another California city, the boundary is not the same: in Santa Ana and San Luis Obispo the meter is in the road reserve and the owner's pipe runs out to it, while here the district keeps that length to the property line. Second, section 10.04.040 lets the district maintain, repair or replace its own facilities on private property "without consent or interference of the owner or occupant", and section 10.04.070 makes the property owner liable for damage to district facilities caused by something originating on the premises. Third, and this is the one to raise if it ever matters: the District's own water page does not draw the line in the same place its code does. The page says "a District service line ("Lateral") connects the water main to a water meter that serves water to your property" and that "a customer service line (pipe) connects to the water meter and enters your property" - which starts your pipe at the meter. The same page places that meter "usually located two feet outside the property line, near the sidewalk". The code gives you everything beyond the PROPERTY LINE; the page gives you everything from the METER. Those two feet are the district's on one reading and yours on the other. It is a small length of pipe and it is a real disagreement between an ordinance and the page a householder actually reads, so if a leak turns up right there, cite the code. The page is worth reading anyway for one practical reason: it tells you where to look. The meter box is near the sidewalk, about two feet outside your property line, and "usually is in line with the water spigot, (faucet)".
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, Victorville says:
The property line divides the pipe, and the code says so from both directions: the City is responsible for "the sewer lateral line from the sewer main-line or trunk line to the property line", and owners must maintain "at the property owners' sole expense, the building sewer line from their building or structure to their property line". The City's own Maintenance and Repair page says something different in one paragraph - that owners are responsible "from the building to the point where it connects to the City's sewer system" - while listing "Sewer laterals located within the public right-of-way" as the City's in another. The ordinance is what governs, and the ordinance says property line.
Both pipes divide in the same place here — the property line.
Who pays for the sewer lateral in Victorville, 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.