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Who owns the water service line in Houston, TX

Which part of the pipe is yours

  • Water service line

    Yours from the meter to your building

    Why, and what to do
  • Sewer lateral

    Yours from the cleanout to your building — if certain conditions are met

    Why, and what to do
your buildingproperty linesidewalkstreetmain
The thick length is yours. A dashed marker means the position depends on your property — see below.

If something’s wrong

Who to call first about the water service line

BelowGrid has no first-call guidance on file from Houston about the water service line.

The documents this answer is built on

Who is responsible for which part

Houston owns and maintains the water service connection from the main up to and including the meter. Section 47-7 of the City of Houston Code of Ordinances provides that "The department shall own and maintain that part of the water service connection extending from the main to the meter, including the service line, meter, meter box, vault enclosure, and attached electronic devices." This is Houston's own statement.

Houston
The service line from the main to the meter, the meter, the meter box, any vault enclosure and attached electronic devices. No one may remove, repair or tamper with them without the consent of the utility official, except that the resident may shut off the water at the meter in an emergency.
The property owner
The water pipe on the building side of the meter. Section 47-7 gives the City the part from the main to the meter and does not name any other City part.

What else is worth knowing

The dividing point is the meter. The City delivers water through six public water systems: its main system and the Kingwood, District 73, District 82, Belleau Woods and Willow Chase systems. About 86% of Houston's land is inside those six systems as the Texas Water Development Board maps them (the main system about 79%, Kingwood about 4%), and this answer applies only inside that area. Other water suppliers serve the rest under their own rules, among them Clear Lake City Water Authority (about 2%) and many municipal utility districts, each under 1%; about 8% of the city's land falls on no mapped supplier. Check the name on your water bill.

Sources

City of Houston Code of Ordinances section 47-7

Checked

What the pipe is made of

Texas publishes no statewide inventory of what service lines are made of. Each water system filed its own with the State, and federal rules require the utility to make it public, so the utility is the place to ask what is recorded for this address.

Houston: official site

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.
  • This answer applies inside the area the State maps for Houston's own water system, which does not follow the city limits: some addresses in the city are served by another supplier, and some outside it are served by the city. An address search checks which side an address is on.
  • 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.
Houston: official site

Your other pipe: the sewer lateral

For the sewer lateral, Houston says:

Houston Public Works divides the sewer line at the cleanout near the street. It states that "Cleanouts are used to mark the limits of the City’s public collection system", that "Problems with private wastewater pipes, which are typically closer to the home, are the responsibility of the homeowner", and that "Problems with public pipes or those on a public right-of-way are the responsibility of Houston Public Works."

Your sewer lateral is yours to the cleanout; your water line stops being yours at the meter.

Same trench, separate authorities, decided separately.

Who pays for the sewer lateral in Houston, TX

Look up a specific address

This page describes what applies to properties in Houston in general. To see which authorities serve one address, and what records exist for it, search for it.

Search for an address