Who owns the water service line in Windsor, 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
In Windsor, installing and maintaining the water service up to the meter is the Windsor Water District's job. Section 12-3-365 provides that "All water service pipes and connections to water mains within the District shall be installed and maintained by the District to the customer side of the meter, except as otherwise provided by an agreement executed by the District." This is Windsor Water District's own statement.
- Windsor Water District
- The water service pipe and its connection to the main, installed and maintained by the District up to the customer side of the meter.
- The property owner
- The code assigns the District installation and maintenance up to the customer side of the meter, does not address ownership, and says nothing further about the pipe beyond the meter. Damage the owner or consumer causes is theirs to pay for: any service pipe, fittings or meter "damaged as a result of negligence, malicious acts or intent shall be repaired by the District and the actual cost of the repair shall be charged to the owner or consumer."
What else is worth knowing
Sources
Windsor Water District Code section 12-3-365, Maintenance of water service connection generallyWhat Windsor Water District 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.
Windsor Water District has classified more of its service lines than most of California: 0.00% of its lines are unclassified, against 9.2% statewide.
- 9,323
- 0 (0.00%)
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 92% of Windsor's land inside the boundary it maps for Windsor Water District. A share of land is not a share of homes: open space counts the same as a dense block. Measured 25 Sep 2026.
- Classified does not mean inspected. Across California only 22% of service lines were established by field inspection; most of 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 Windsor, CALook up a specific address
This page describes what applies to properties in Windsor 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.