24-Hour Emergency Plumbing in Santa Clarita

Santa Clarita: water, sewer and permits

Santa Clarita incorporated on December 15, 1987, as the 85th city in Los Angeles County, joining Canyon Country, Newhall, Saugus and Valencia under one city government. It began at 39.79 square miles and, through annexations that brought in Northbridge, North Valencia, Fair Oaks Ranch, Plum Canyon, Skyline Ranch and Tesoro del Valle, reached 73.66 square miles by 2022. Saugus grew up as a railroad town in the 1870s, Canyon Country dates from 1963, and Valencia was dedicated in 1967 as a master-planned community. The Santa Clara River runs through the city, William S. Hart Park and Museum is in Newhall, and College of the Canyons opened in 1969. Interstate 5 marks the west side, with unincorporated Stevenson Ranch and Val Verde beyond it, and the Angeles National Forest rises to the north and east.

The US Census (ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimates) counts about 78,100 housing units in Santa Clarita. The median home was built in 1987, only 31 percent date from before 1980, and 61 percent are detached single-family houses. The 1980s were the biggest building decade, with 26 percent of today's homes, and the 2000s came next with 19 percent. By county standards that housing is young, yet a house from the 1980s still has supply pipe close to forty years old, and the condos, townhomes and apartments that make up much of the rest share walls and drain lines with the unit next door.

SCV Water, formed on January 1, 2018, serves about 292,000 people. In 2025, 66 percent of its supply was imported State Water Project water, 33 percent was local groundwater pumped from the Alluvium and Saugus Formation aquifers, and 1 percent was recycled. The groundwater is the hard part: it averaged 354 mg/L of hardness, about 20.7 grains per gallon, against 160 mg/L (9.4) for the treated imported water, and SCV Water says those minerals leave spots and scale. A salt-based softener is not the easy answer here. Salt-discharging, self-regenerating softeners are banned in the Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District, because their chloride passes through the treatment plants into the Santa Clara River; new installs were banned again in 2003, and a 2008 ballot measure, Measure S, went after existing units as well. So scale gets handled where it does the damage: in tank and tankless heaters, valves and fixtures.

The City owns its local sewer mains, and the County Sewer Maintenance District has maintained them since the City joined in 1989. The Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District treats the wastewater at its Saugus plant, from 1962, and its Valencia plant, from 1967. Because the City adopted the County's sewer code, the lateral is the owner's responsibility even where the pipe, or the problem, lies under the street. SoCalGas supplies the gas. Plumbing permits come from the City's Building and Safety Permit Center at City Hall, 23920 Valencia Blvd., Suite 140, or online through eService, and water heater changeouts, repipes and water service replacements can be permitted instantly online. We pull the permit and keep it open until the City inspector approves the work, and our phone is answered at any hour for all of Santa Clarita.