Durham, NC Water Use Rules: Leak Reporting Duty (2026)

Section 70-555 of the Durham City Code, part of Article VI's year-round water efficiency requirements, prohibits water waste by any city water user. Subsection (2) bars irrigating while precipitation is falling, and subsection (1) bars letting irrigation runoff flow off landscaped areas onto impervious surfaces, adjacent property, streets, sidewalks, gutters or storm drains. Subsection (3) is the leak duty at issue here: no user may knowingly allow water to escape through a leak, break or malfunction in their plumbing or distribution system beyond the period in which it should reasonably have been repaired, and every leak, break or malfunction must be corrected within 30 days of identifying its source.

Subsection (4) separately bars using a fire hydrant for anything but firefighting, hydrant or distribution-system maintenance, or an approved emergency exception. A handful of exceptions apply system-wide: water waste before June 1, 2009; firefighting, hydrant inspection, and fire-training flows; water applied to prevent a health or safety hazard when no alternative exists; and flow from inspecting, operating or maintaining a public utility system. Section 70-556 folds enforcement of this leak duty into the same remedies and variance track used for the year-round irrigation schedule and the water shortage stages, Division 3, Sections 70-573 through 70-575, so a leak left unrepaired past 30 days is treated the same as any other water-waste violation: written warning, notice of violation, then escalating civil penalties and possible service termination.