Rockdale County, GA Water Use Rules: Leak Reporting Duty (2026)

Rockdale County Code § 98-39, part of chapter 98's water-system division on standards for delivery of water services, splits liability for unpaid utility charges from responsibility for physical leaks. The county will not hold a current owner or landlord liable for a prior owner's, occupant's or lessee's unpaid water or wastewater bill, and it will not place a lien on real property to secure unpaid charges unless the property owner is the person who actually incurred them. Layered on top of that debt rule is a separate move-in requirement: the landlord must repair any water or wastewater leak before a new tenant takes occupancy, and the landlord, not the tenant, must be the one who applies for service while the repair is pending.

Rockdale Water Resources will not let the incoming tenant open an account until the department confirms the leak repair and the landlord has paid the final water and wastewater bill on the account. Only then can the tenant apply to establish service in the tenant's own name. The rule was adopted with the original utilities ordinance (Ord. No. 2007-07, § 1, 3-27-2007) and the leak-repair and move-in language was added by Ord. No. 0-2019-14, § 1, adopted May 28, 2019. It sits in Article II, Division 1 (Standards for Delivery of Water Services) of chapter 98, Utilities, which governs the county water and sewer system serving unincorporated Rockdale County; Conyers, the county's only municipality, runs its own separate water utility inside city limits.