Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) – Water System
Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power water-service territory, including certain Eastern Sierra service communities
Population reference
3,856,043 people (EPA SDWIS PWS ID CA1910067; active community water system record for Los Angeles County)
Billing detail
Broad public detail found
Official destination
Open provider website ↗Provider-specific findings
Billing and account research from public material
Provider-specific research notes are displayed separately from fields that contain only an unavailable-information marker. Read qualifiers in each note and verify current account terms with the provider.
- Billing frequency
- Bi-monthly for residential and multi-residential water customers; the first bill for a new customer may cover more or less than 60 days. Commercial service is billed monthly. LADWP also offers a voluntary Level Pay monthly budgeting arrangement, which does not change the underlying regular billing cycle.
- Rate structure
- Seasonal, tiered metered water rates measured in hundred cubic feet (HCF), with Schedule A residential tier allotments and pass-through adjustment factors that vary by month and temperature zone. For 2026, LADWP publishes Schedule A total consumption charges for service inside Los Angeles of $12.495/$14.681/$15.427/$17.522 per HCF for Tiers 1–4 in January–June and $11.794/$14.278/$15.024/$15.024 in July–December. The posted amounts include base rates and current water-supply, water-quality, revenue-target, infrastructure, and other adjustment factors; service outside the City of Los Angeles adds the 2026 outside-city surcharge of $0.319 per HCF. The water bill is combined with separate sanitation charges administered for the City’s Bureau of Sanitation.
- Residential cost reference
- Approximately $60–$110 per month for combined water and residential sewer service at 5,000–7,000 gallons, treated as a planning estimate rather than a universal quote. LADWP bills water every two months in HCF and applies seasonal tiers; the City’s residential Sewer Service Charge is calculated from the prior rainy-season winter-water-use estimate and is relatively stable across the following six billing periods. Trash, low-income sewer surcharges, service fees, meter conditions, temperature-zone allotments, and the actual winter average can move the total materially, so the current bill and LADWP rate schedule control.
- Wastewater and sewer calculation
- LADWP provides billing for the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation’s Sewer Service Charge (SSC). Residential sewage volume uses the Winter Water Use method: for the July 1–June 30 service year, the City calculates an average daily sewage volume from the lowest average daily water use during the preceding rainy-season review period, generally October/November through April/May. The resulting SSC is billed throughout the next six bi-monthly periods and is not tied directly to each current billing period’s water consumption. A Dry Winter Compensation Factor of 1.0 or less may be applied based on rainfall and consumption. Residential customers can request a BOS adjustment, including for qualifying pool-fill or other abnormal winter use; a private tributary/non-tributary sub-meter can replace the estimate at customer expense.
- Meter reading
- LADWP bills residential customers on a bi-monthly meter-reading cycle and measures water in HCF, with the field system able to estimate usage when a reading is inconsistent with historical use, the meter is inaccessible, or the meter is defective. Standard water meters may have direct-reading or round-dial registers; the customer can inspect the register and analyze usage through My Account. LADWP is modernizing metering and has AMI projects, but the current public water pages do not claim that every residential water meter is already a fully deployed two-way AMI endpoint. The current 2026 record is therefore mixed conventional/remote-read infrastructure, with automated or field reads and estimated bills when necessary; optional Flume monitors provide minute-by-minute customer usage data but are not the LADWP billing meter.
- New-account deposit
- A universal residential deposit amount is not published because LADWP applies credit and service rules to the account. Under the current disconnection policy, a residential tenant taking service away from a delinquent landlord account must establish LADWP credit and may be required to pay a deposit; the deposit is separate from the one-time activation/transfer charge. The reviewed public pages do not state a single credit-score threshold, deposit multiple, or automatic refund date after on-time payments, so customers should obtain the account-specific requirement from 1-800-DIAL-DWP before starting service.
- Activation or transfer fee
- $19.00 one-time, non-refundable Turn On Service Charge applied whenever water service is turned on or transferred; the charge appears on the opening bill. The current LADWP account FAQ distinguishes this fee from any deposit, construction connection charge, delinquent reconnection fee, or commercial service-specific charge.
Context, not a score
How documentation coverage compares
This profile
100%
overview fields with research notes
California
67%
records with any overview detail
National index
50%
records with any overview detail
Coverage measures what this directory documented. It does not measure service quality, affordability, or regulatory compliance.
Research record
Broad public detail found
7 of 7 fields in this section contain provider-specific public detail in dataset August 1, 2026.
Documented
100%
Primary verification routes
- Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) – Water System public website ↗
Provider-controlled destination used to confirm current customer instructions.
- EPA SDWIS / ECHO lookup (CA1910067) ↗
Search the federal drinking-water database using public water system ID CA1910067.
