Meriden, CT Water Use Rules: Leak Reporting Duty (2026)

Meriden Code § 207-10 governs meter seals, meter reading and the sale of water by the City's Water Division. Subsection H places a direct, unqualified duty on the property owner: report any meter leak or malfunction to the Water Division as soon as it is detected. This duty sits alongside a parallel requirement in Subsection B that broken meter seals be immediately reported to the Water Division by the property owner; self-reporting a broken seal carries no resealing charge. If instead a Water Division employee finds an unreported broken seal, Subsection B(1) sets a $200 charge for each resealing.

The chapter also gives the Water Division broad access rights: under Subsection J, it may enter the customer's premises at reasonable times to read, inspect, repair, replace or service meters and related equipment, including electrical circuits and terminal blocks, which is the mechanism by which an unreported leak or broken seal is typically discovered if the owner does not call it in first. Because Meriden bills on metered consumption at $3.15 per hundred cubic feet under § 207-13, an unreported leak also means the owner keeps paying for lost water until the Water Division catches the problem on its own, on top of any resealing charge that a self-report would have avoided.