Water and Sewer Lines in Lexington: Who Owns What

Search who is responsible for a sewer backup in Lexington and the top result is usually SD1, which is the sewer district for Northern Kentucky, a hundred miles away. A Colorado sanitation district ranks too. Neither has anything to do with Fayette County.

That happens because Lexington never wrote its own answer down in one place, and because the split here is unusual.

Two utilities, not one

• Water is private. Kentucky American Water is a company, regulated by the Kentucky Public Service Commission. It bills you directly.
• Sewer is public. The city's Division of Water Quality runs the sanitary sewers and bills through LEXserv.

Your LEXserv bill covers the fees for three city services: sanitary sewer, landfill and water quality.

In most American cities one utility does both and one bill covers both. Advice written for those places quietly assumes it, which is why it misfires here.

The trap on the water company's own page

Kentucky American Water's rights and responsibilities page has a section describing what equipment belongs to whom. It is accurate about water. It also contains paragraphs about sanitary sewer mains and a customer sanitary sewer service line, including a line saying the sanitary sewers in your neighborhood are owned, operated and maintained by the company.

That text is American Water's boilerplate, written to cover all of its territories, and the company does provide wastewater service in some of them. It does not in Lexington. If you are reading that page from a Lexington address, use the water half and ignore the sewer half.

The water side, from the street in

1. The water main, under the street. The company's.
2. The company service line, from that main out to the curb stop.
3. The curb stop, a valve near the curb that turns your house off. The company's, and the boundary marker for everything else.
4. The customer service line, from the curb stop to your building. Yours.
5. The meter. Owned and installed by the company. But you have to give it an adequate, accessible location and protect it from damage, including freezing.

The company states the two ends of that plainly:

Company Water Service Line. Owned and maintained by the company, this service line extends from the water main to the curb stop or curb line.

Customer Water Service Line. Owned and maintained by the customer, this service line extends from the curb stop or curb line to the building.

Curb Stop. Owned and maintained by the company, the curb stop is a valve that can be opened and closed to control the supply of water to the property.

Two more items on that list are worth knowing. A meter pit, where one exists, is the company's for single meters up to two inches, but you keep it visible and you own all the plumbing inside it. A pressure reducing valve is owned, installed, and maintained by you.

The sewer side, from your house out

1. Your building sewer, sometimes called the lateral, running from the house out toward the street.
2. The public sanitary sewer main. The city's, along with 81 pump stations and over 1,400 miles of pipe feeding two treatment plants.

Note the asymmetry that catches people out. On the water side there is a named, physical boundary, the curb stop. On the sewer side there is no equivalent marker in the ordinance, which is a large part of why the sewer question is harder to answer than the water one.

1. Check whether it is just you.

   If the neighbors are out too, it is the main and the company already knows or soon will. If it is only your house, the problem is likelier to be on your side of the curb stop.

2. Work out which side of the curb stop it is on.

   Water surfacing between the main and the curb is the company's pipe. Water surfacing between the curb and your house is yours. The curb stop is the line.

3. Call Kentucky American Water either way.

   1-800-678-6301, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Call it even if you suspect the leak is yours. The company can confirm which side it is on, and it is the only party that can shut the curb stop.

4. If it is your side, hire a plumber.

   The company did not install and does not maintain customer-owned water service lines. Repairs on your side are your bill.

Do not confuse this line with the sewer emergency number. They are different utilities.

Kentucky American Water runs a Hidden Leak Adjustment. It rebills the leaked water at 25 percent of the applicable tariff instead of the full rate.

1. Check that your leak is the kind that qualifies.

   A hidden underground leak is defined as a leak in the customer service line between the meter and the premises. This does not include leaks from toilets, hot water heaters, faucets, etc.

   A running toilet does not qualify, however expensive it was. Buried pipe in the yard does.

2. Fix it, and keep the paperwork.

   You have to provide a plumber's statement or a list of materials showing the leak has been repaired. Without that the request will not be considered.

3. Send in the form.

   Complete, print, and sign the Leak Adjustment Request Form, then email it to Customer Advocacy or mail it to Kentucky American Water, ATTN: Customer Advocacy, 2300 Richmond Road, Lexington, KY 40502.

4. Expect the math to be a comparison.

   After the company verifies the repair, it compares your usage during the leak period against your average for the past six billing periods, and rebills the excess at the reduced rate. If six periods of history do not exist, it uses a reasonable estimate.

The limit that catches people

Only two leak adjustments are permitted during the lifetime of a water service line, and each one covers at most two billing periods. Before a third can even be considered, the entire service line from the meter box to the premises has to be replaced. So a pipe that keeps failing eventually stops being forgivable, which is worth weighing when you decide between another patch and a replacement.

The program covers residential and commercial customers across the whole Kentucky American Water service territory. Details and the form are on the company's hidden leak adjustment page.

1. Stop running water in the house.

   Every flush and every load of laundry adds to what has nowhere to go. Stop first, diagnose second.

2. Call the city, and get the hours right.

   • 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.: LexCall 311, or (859) 425-2255.
   • Any other time: the Sanitary Sewer Emergency line, (859) 335-2716.

   On holidays and weekends all sewer calls go to the after-hours number, whatever the clock says.

3. Let the city check the main first.

   This is the step worth not skipping. If the blockage is in the public main, it is the city's to clear and you have just saved yourself a plumber's call-out. If it is on your side, you now know that too.

4. Then call a plumber if it is yours.

   A blockage in the building sewer is priced as the owner's job. Tree roots are a common cause. If your house has a cleanout, that is where a plumber will start.

5. Photograph everything before you clean up.

   Whatever the cause, the damage record matters later, for an insurance claim or for a conversation with the city.

If work will involve tapping, opening, altering, or disturbing the public sewer, that is permit territory under Sec. 16-40:

All permits to tap a sanitary sewer and to construct a building sewer must be obtained from the urban county engineer and signed by a master plumber before any connection with or opening into, use, altering or disturbing of any public sanitary sewer or appurtenance thereof can be made.

The same section makes obtaining and signing the owner's permit the sole responsibility of the property owner before a sanitary sewer tap permit is issued. Your plumber will usually handle the mechanics, but the obligation is written to you.

Sewer charges are calculated from metered water use. So a leak in your yard inflates the sewer bill as well, even though not a drop of it reached a sewer. The city has a fix.

LEXserv recognizes that some water usage may not flow into the sewer system due to a leak, irrigation or pool fill. If you have higher than normal usage resulting in a dramatic increase in your bill, you may be eligible for an adjustment to your sewer charges.

1. Check whether it already corrected itself.

   For residential customers the main mechanism is automatic. Average Winter Consumption averages the usage billed from November through April, counting months with at least one CCF. From May through October the city bills using either that average or your actual usage, whichever is lower.

   If your leak or pool fill happened in summer, look at the bill before you file anything. The discount may already be applied.

   New here with no winter history? You are billed at 90 percent of actual usage instead.

2. If it did not, file the right request.

   The city runs two separate residential request forms, one for a leak adjustment and one for a pool fill or irrigation adjustment. Pick the one that matches what happened.

3. Businesses use a different form.

   Non-residential customers may be eligible for a billing credit for water that does not enter the sanitary sewer, through the Application for Sewer User Charge Exclusion submitted to the Division of Water Quality. Call (859) 425-2450.

Both request forms and the current terms are on the city's sewer user fee adjustments page. LEXserv customer service is (859) 280-8047 or 1 (888) 987-8111, Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Do both, separately

One leak, two bills, two programs. A Hidden Leak Adjustment from the water company does not touch your sewer charges, and a LEXserv adjustment does not touch your water bill. If the leak was big enough to notice, it is probably worth filing with both.

This one is genuinely counterintuitive, because the sewer bill is the city's and the water is a private company's.

The city states that water can be shut off due to a past due LEXserv account, and that payment in full is required to restore water service or to avoid possible service disruption. Two utilities, one shutoff valve.

If your LEXserv account is heading that way, call (859) 280-8047 or 1 (888) 987-8111 before it happens. The city asks you to call immediately to pay the past due balance or set up a payment plan.

Sewer and drain backup damage is commonly excluded from a standard homeowners policy and sold as an optional endorsement instead. Check your own declarations page or ask your agent, ideally before you need it. This page cannot tell you what your policy covers.

This is a plain-language summary of published utility terms and one chapter of the city code, not legal advice and not a promise about your bill or your claim. Programs and tariffs change. For a dispute with Kentucky American Water you have the right to contact the Kentucky Public Service Commission, which the company states on its own rights page.