Who owns the water service line in Westminster, CA
The City supplies the water across the city and owns and maintains the water service and the meter. Section 13.08.030 provides that "All water services and water meters connected to the water system are and shall remain at all times the property of the city, and the city shall maintain and repair them when necessary". This is Westminster'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
- Westminster
- The water service - the pipe from the main to the meter - and the meter itself, as property and as a repair duty. Section 13.08.050 adds that the City "shall determine the location, size, type and make of mains, valves, fire hydrants, fittings, consumer services and all other appurtenances", so where the service runs and where the meter sits are the City's decisions too.
- The property owner
- The pipework from the meter into the building. Westminster's code states the City's side and does not write out the customer's in a sentence of its own: what the City owns and maintains is the water service and the meter, and the plumbing beyond the meter is neither of those, so nothing in the code makes it the City's.
- What else is worth knowing
- Two things are worth knowing. First, the handover is stated by the City's side alone - the code names what the City keeps and stops there, rather than saying in terms that everything past the meter is yours - so if a leak sits right at the meter, ask the City which side of it the fault is on before you pay anyone. Second, the City's duty does not cover damage the customer causes: meter "Replacements, repairs or adjustments" made necessary "by any act of malice, carelessness or neglect of the consumer" are billed to the consumer. The City's system covers almost all of the city; section 13.08.010 creates it "to serve the area within the city".
What Westminster 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.
Westminster has classified more of its service lines than most of California: 0.00% of its lines are unclassified, against 9.2% statewide.
- 24,450
- 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. Westminster established 7.3% 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 Westminster, 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.