Spotsylvania County, VA Water Use Rules: Leak Reporting Duty (2026)

Section 22-339, in Chapter 22's utility-billing article, addresses any measurable water leak on the customer's side of the county's water meter or at the water meter. Two leak types are treated separately. Subsection (a) covers a leak from a defect in any buried pipe, fixture or fitting on the customer's side of the meter where the escaping water never reaches the county sewer system; both the water and sewer bill may be adjusted. Subsection (b) covers the same kind of loss from any nonburied pipe, fixture, or fitting, but only the sewer bill qualifies for adjustment since the county still delivered and billed the water itself.

Both subsections carry the same carve-out: no adjustments shall be made for irrigation service, so a broken irrigation line, however large the loss, gets no billing relief. The customer carries the burden of proof under subsection (c): they must supply the county administrator with evidence satisfactory to the county administrator of the location and repair of the leak before any credit issues. Once that proof is accepted, the adjustment is capped at two consecutive billing periods, and the adjusted bill is not simply zeroed out, it is recalculated using the county administrator's estimate of the customer's average water consumption for that customer's account, so relief is measured against the household's own typical usage rather than a flat waiver.

The section traces back to the 1980 Code § 17-89 and has been amended three times, most recently in 1998, without changing this core reporting-and-repair structure.