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Who owns the water service line in Bellevue, WA

Which part of the pipe is yours

  • Water service line

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

    Why, and what to do
  • Sewer lateral

    Yours from your property line 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 Bellevue about the water service line.

The documents this answer is built on

Who is responsible for which part

Bellevue's water utility owns the meter and the pipe connecting it to the main; the property owner owns and maintains the water facilities on private property. Section 24.02.115 provides that "Property owners shall be responsible for the development, maintenance, and repairs of all private water facilities." This is Bellevue's own statement.

Bellevue
Title to the service up to and including the meter. Section 24.02.115 provides that the utility "owns all water facilities in public rights-of-way and in easements dedicated to the public and accepted by the utility, up to and including the meter", typically including "Meters and all facilities connecting meters with water mains". The code does not say in the same words that the utility repairs the service.
The property owner
The water facilities on private property, which section 24.02.115 provides "are exclusively owned by the underlying property owner(s)".

What decides which applies

The utility's part ends at the meter. Ownership can differ where it is "otherwise indicated as a matter of record", or where a facility is assigned or dedicated by easement to the City. The City's water service area, as the Washington State Department of Health maps it, covers nearly all of Bellevue's land, and this answer applies inside that area; small edges of the city fall in the areas of King County Water District 117, Kirkland, Issaquah and Redmond. Check the name on your water bill.

Sources

Bellevue City Code section 24.02.115, System ownership (Ord. 5963, 2010)

Also quoted:

Checked

What the pipe is made of

Washington 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.

Bellevue: 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 Bellevue'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.
Bellevue: official site

Your other pipe: the sewer lateral

For the sewer lateral, Bellevue says:

Bellevue's sewer utility owns the side sewer stub - the part of the side sewer in the street right-of-way - and the property owner owns and maintains the side sewer on private property. Section 24.04.115 of the Bellevue City Code provides that "Property owners shall be responsible for the development, maintenance, and repairs of private side sewers and their appurtenances, including but not limited to check valves, cleanouts, and pumps."

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

Same trench, separate authorities, decided separately.

Who pays for the sewer lateral in Bellevue, WA

Look up a specific address

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

Search for an address