Lakewood, Jefferson County
The Plumber Lakewood CO Homeowners Call May Be Working for a Shareholder Rather Than a Customer
Across much of Lakewood the water does not come from the city. It comes from The Consolidated Mutual Water Company, and the relationship is not the one anybody assumes. The company states it plainly: it is a mutual water company, meaning its customers are also its shareholders.
That is not a piece of corporate trivia. It changes the arithmetic of a plumbing job. The company states that the shares you hold determine how much water you can use in each billing tier, that shares are purchased in multiples of five, and that every five shares equal one Equivalent Residential Unit. Your allowance is denominated in equity.
And connecting a new property is not a fee, it is a purchase. The published price of capital stock is 2,600 dollars a share, or 13,000 dollars for the five share block a single house needs, plus a water development fee on top. Before anybody digs a trench, a new house in this service area is a five figure transaction.
The Lead Fact
A New Water Tap Here Costs 33,000 Dollars, and 13,000 of It Buys You Something You Keep
Most cities charge a connection fee. You pay it, it is gone, and what you have bought is permission. Consolidated does something structurally different, and the difference is worth understanding before comparing this number with anything published anywhere else.
The company states that as a stockholder owned company, each new tap requires the purchase of the appropriate shares of capital stock and payment of all applicable fees. So the connection charge splits into two things that behave in opposite ways.
| Meter size | Shares required | Share cost | Water development fee | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3/4 inch | 5 | 13,000 dollars | 20,000 dollars | 33,000 dollars |
| 1 inch | 10 | 26,000 dollars | 40,000 dollars | 66,000 dollars |
| 1 1/2 inch | 15 | 39,000 dollars | 60,000 dollars | 99,000 dollars |
| 2 inch displacement | 25 | 65,000 dollars | 100,000 dollars | 165,000 dollars |
| 3 inch turbine | 65 | 169,000 dollars | 260,000 dollars | 429,000 dollars |
The stock is an asset. It is capital in a company, it attaches to the property, and it is the thing that entitles the property to water at all. The development fee is a fee in the ordinary sense: the company states that the board sets the selling price of capital stock to ensure that much of the cost of new water resource development is passed on to new customers creating the demand.
Why this matters to a plumbing decision rather than only to a developer
Because of how the share requirement is calculated. The company states it will determine the tap and meter size, and the required shares and development fees, by the number of residential units on the property, the number of fixtures within a multi family or commercial property, or the estimated annual volume of water taken, whichever is greater.
The company is also explicit that redevelopment and remodel projects are in scope. It requires either a Change of Use form or a Change of Use and Remodel application depending on the scope of work. A remodel that adds fixtures or units is therefore a conversation with the water company as well as with a builder, and it is much better to have that conversation at the drawing stage.
The Sorting That Matters
Four Different Things Arrive on One Bill and Only One of Them Is Water
Water bills are normally described line by line, which hides the useful distinction. In this service area the charges are four genuinely different kinds of thing, and the difference decides which of them a plumbing decision can move and which it cannot.
Equity
Capital stock at 2,600 dollars a share, sold in blocks of five. An asset, not a charge. It is the only item on this list you still own afterwards, and it is the reason the connection number looks so unlike a municipal tap fee.
Capacity
Every five shares equal one Equivalent Residential Unit, and your ERU count scales the tier thresholds proportionately. One ERU gets 5,000 gallons at tier one. Two ERUs get 10,000 at tier one. The allowance is the shareholding.
Access
A fixed monthly customer service charge set purely by meter size, from 22.55 dollars for a five eighths inch displacement meter to 1,350 dollars for an eight inch turbine. Payable whether or not a drop of water moves.
Consumption
The tiered volume charge. From 1 June 2026 the company publishes 5.60 dollars, 8.00 dollars and 11.00 dollars per thousand gallons at tiers one, two and three. This is the only line a leak, a fixture or a habit actually moves.
The practical use of that split is straightforward. A dripping cistern or a weeping service line moves item four and nothing else, but it moves it up a tier structure where the third tier is nearly double the first. Right sizing a meter moves item three permanently. And nothing a plumber does moves items one and two, which are set by the shareholding and are the largest numbers on the page.
Why a Leak Is Worse Here
The Tier Structure Punishes the Last Gallons of a Bad Month, Not the First
Consolidated states that effective 1 June 2026 it is transitioning to a tiered rate system based on usage, at 5.60 dollars, 8.00 dollars and 11.00 dollars per thousand gallons for tiers one, two and three. It says each successive tier carries a higher rate to promote conservation and to support the additional load on the system.
For a single ERU, which is five shares, the published thresholds are up to 5,000 gallons at tier one, 5,001 to 15,000 at tier two, and 15,001 and above at tier three. A customer with two ERUs simply has twice the allotment, and the table runs up to fifty shares and ten ERUs.
The consequence for anything that leaks is not linear. A continuous loss does not add gallons at the average price, it adds them at the top of whatever tier the month ends in. A household comfortably inside tier one most months, pushed into tier three by a failed fill valve or a weeping service line, is paying nearly double for the overrun. Our leak detection page covers finding them.
There is a second rule that catches people with more than one meter, and it is stated in one line: no combination or aggregation of charges for service to a customer through two or more meters shall be made. Two meters on one property are two separate ladders, each starting at zero, each with its own fixed monthly service charge.
That matters most on properties with a separate irrigation meter or an accessory building. Splitting a supply is sometimes the right engineering answer and it is never a billing saving here, because nothing is pooled. The fixed charge is duplicated and neither meter borrows allowance from the other.
A Published Contradiction Worth 6,000 Dollars
The Water Company Publishes Two Different Development Fees, and We Are Not Picking One
This is the kind of thing we would normally resolve quietly and quote the better number. We are not doing that here, because the gap is large enough to change a decision and because a reader who takes the wrong figure to a budget meeting is the one who pays for our tidiness.
| Where it is published | What it says | Cost for one five share residential tap |
|---|---|---|
| The rates page | Effective 1 October 2023, new taps are assessed a water development fee of 2,800 dollars per share, or 14,000 dollars per five share unit | 14,000 dollars |
| The tap sales page, stated three times across three separate tables | Effective 1 February 2026, the water development fee is 4,000 dollars per share, or 20,000 dollars per five share block | 20,000 dollars |
Both pages are live on the same website. The difference is 1,200 dollars a share, which is 6,000 dollars on the five share block a single house requires, and considerably more on anything larger. On a 65 share three inch commercial tap the same discrepancy is 78,000 dollars.
Which one we would work from, and why we still will not call it
The tap sales figure is the more recent by more than two years, it appears three times rather than once, its tables carry a revision date of 1 January 2026, and it sits on the page that exists specifically to price new connections. On the evidence that is the operative number and the rates page sentence looks like a line that was not updated.
But we did not ask the company, and a page that guesses confidently about somebody else fee schedule is worse than one that says what it found. Anybody about to commit money should ring Consolidated and get the current figure in writing, and should quote both published sentences when they do, because that is the fastest way to get a definitive answer rather than a repetition of whichever page the person on the phone happens to open.
The share price itself is not in dispute. Both pages agree that effective 1 February 2021 the stated selling price of capital stock is 2,600 dollars per share, or 13,000 dollars per five share unit. The disagreement is entirely in the development fee, which is the larger of the two components.
The Meter Decides Twice
Meter Size Sets a Monthly Charge and a Minimum Shareholding at the Same Time
The published schedule ties two separate things to one decision. Each meter size carries a monthly customer fixed service charge, and each carries a minimum number of shares. A five eighths inch displacement meter is 22.55 dollars a month and needs five shares. A one inch is 36.90 dollars and needs ten.
Ten shares at 2,600 dollars is 26,000 dollars of stock rather than 13,000, plus the development fee on the same doubled basis. So stepping a residential meter up one size is not a modest specification change in this service area. It roughly doubles the capital side of the connection and it raises the standing charge by about 62 per cent, permanently.
Oversizing a meter is a common and usually harmless habit elsewhere, taken as cheap insurance against future demand. Here it is neither cheap nor insurance. The correct answer is a properly calculated demand rather than a comfortable round up, and that calculation is a plumbing exercise. Our repiping page covers the cases where supply sizing genuinely does need to change.
The schedule also distinguishes displacement from turbine meters at two inches, with a displacement two inch needing 25 shares at 89.40 dollars a month and a turbine two inch needing 30 shares at 103.75 dollars. That is a meter technology choice with a five share capital consequence attached to it, which is not how meter selection is usually discussed.
One further published detail worth knowing before a bad month becomes a worse one. The company states an account is delinquent once charges remain unpaid beyond the due date, that service is discontinued if an account is still delinquent six weeks after the original statement date, that partial payments are not accepted once delinquent, and that a 25 dollar service charge applies.
Why the Structure Exists
It Began With Neighbours Sharing the Cost of a Deep Well
The company publishes its own history and it explains the share structure better than any rate table can. Early suburban development west of Denver was served by surface wells, sometimes one well for a whole neighbourhood, yielding hard water with a constant contamination hazard.
Only deep wells of 600 to 700 feet gave good water and they were expensive to drill. So, in the company own words, new suburbanites banded together to share the cost of drilling deep wells, building pump houses and storage tanks, and laying pipelines to their homes. Those neighbourhood arrangements became incorporated non profit mutual water companies, and in 1926 four of them merged to form Consolidated.
The company also publishes its worst moment, which is unusual and to its credit. After five years of growth the Dust Bowl drought and the Great Depression hit together, users could not pay, the company defaulted on its bonds, and most users were left without water in the summer of 1931. A special assessment was levied against the stockholders, and it states that some of them worked it off by digging trenches and laying pipe.
That sentence is the clearest possible statement of what a mutual utility is. Ownership is not only an entitlement to water, it is an exposure to the cost of providing it. The emergency connection with the Denver Water Board negotiated after that default is the origin of a relationship that persists: the company states that the Maple Grove treatment facility now meets 30 to 40 per cent of its annual requirement, with the remaining 60 to 70 per cent purchased from Denver Water.
One more piece of local history with a boundary in it. The company describes Denver Water 1951 Blue Line policy, under which Denver Water would not supply water west of Sheridan Boulevard, and states that this forced it to seek new sources and build the Maple Grove Reservoir. A line drawn on a map seventy five years ago is why the water in much of Lakewood is treated locally.
Coverage and Neighbours
Where Lakewood Sits in Our Colorado Coverage
Lakewood is the fifth largest city in Colorado and it sits immediately west of Denver across the Jefferson County line. The wider state picture, including altitude bands and frost depths, is on our Colorado page.
Around it, our Arvada page is built on how many separate water and sanitation bodies serve parts of one municipality, and it names Consolidated Mutual among them, which makes it the right page to read first if you are unsure who supplies an address. Denver covers the Denver Water supply area that Lakewood sits partly inside, and Littleton covers what happens when a postal name is much larger than a city boundary. All three problems turn up in Lakewood.
The last two chips are marked on purpose. Edgewater and Wheat Ridge are separate municipalities with their own building departments, and neither has a page here. The point that matters more in this particular city is the one above: the supplier boundary and the municipal boundary are not the same line, and it is the supplier boundary that decides whether any of the share arithmetic on this page applies to a property at all.
Lakewood Water and Plumbing Questions, Answered From What the Supplier Publishes
Every answer below is taken from The Consolidated Mutual Water Company’s own published pages. The company states that rates are subject to change with or without notice, so confirm anything that decides a spend.
If Consolidated Mutual supplies the address, both. The company states that it is a mutual water company, meaning its customers are also its shareholders, and that the shares you hold determine how much water you can use in each billing tier. Shares are purchased in multiples of five and every five shares equal one Equivalent Residential Unit. Not every Lakewood address is on Consolidated, so check the bill before assuming any of this applies.
For a Consolidated Mutual connection, a great deal more than a municipal tap fee, because part of it is a share purchase rather than a charge. The company states the selling price of capital stock is 2,600 dollars per share, or 13,000 dollars per five share block, which is what a single house requires. On top of that sits a water development fee, and the company currently publishes two different figures for it, 2,800 dollars per share on its rates page and 4,000 dollars per share on its tap sales page. Confirm the operative figure with the company before committing.
We do not know, and we are not going to guess on somebody else’s fee schedule. The rates page states that effective 1 October 2023 new taps are assessed a water development fee of 2,800 dollars per share or 14,000 per five share unit. The tap sales page states three times, in three separate tables revised 1 January 2026, that effective 1 February 2026 the fee is 4,000 dollars per share or 20,000 per five share block. The second is newer, repeated, dated and on the page that exists to price connections, which makes it the better evidenced figure. The difference is 6,000 dollars on one house.
By shareholding. The company publishes tier rates effective 1 June 2026 of 5.60, 8.00 and 11.00 dollars per thousand gallons for tiers one, two and three, and states that your ERU count scales the tier thresholds proportionately. At one ERU, which is five shares, tier one runs to 5,000 gallons, tier two from 5,001 to 15,000, and tier three from 15,001 upward. A customer with two ERUs has twice the allotment. The published table runs to fifty shares and ten ERUs.
No. The company states that no combination or aggregation of charges for service to a customer through two or more meters shall be made. Two meters are two separate tier ladders, each starting at zero, and each carries its own monthly customer fixed service charge set by its own size. Splitting a supply can be the right engineering decision but it is not a billing saving here.
It can. The company states that redevelopment and remodel projects submit either a Change of Use form or a Change of Use and Remodel application depending on the scope of work, and that it determines the required shares by the number of residential units, the number of fixtures within a multi family or commercial property, or the estimated annual volume taken, whichever is greater. Because fixtures are one of three competing measures and shares are only sold in blocks of five, a fixture count can have a five figure consequence on a larger property.
The company publishes the sequence. An account is delinquent once charges remain unpaid beyond the due date on the bill or statement. Service is discontinued if the account remains delinquent six weeks after the original statement date. Partial payments are not accepted once an account is delinquent and the entire amount becomes due in full. A 25 dollar service charge applies to accounts not paid in full before the shut off date, and service terminated for non payment is not restored outside regular business hours.
For Consolidated Mutual customers, two places. The company states that its Maple Grove treatment facility, completed in 1957 and expanded in 1961, 1975 and 1988, now meets at least 30 to 40 per cent of its annual water requirement, with the remaining 60 to 70 per cent purchased from Denver Water. It attributes the existence of Maple Grove to Denver Water’s 1951 Blue Line policy, under which Denver Water would not supply water west of Sheridan Boulevard.
Sources, Refusals and Caveats
What This Page Refused to Say, and Why
Three Colorado pages of ours already own the obvious Lakewood angles
The obvious framing for a Lakewood page is that one city is served by many separate water and sanitation bodies. Our Arvada page is already built on exactly that, lists six of them by name, and includes Consolidated Mutual among them. We refused to write it again and pointed at that page instead. Denver Water supply area is refused for the same reason, because our Denver page carries it and names Lakewood in its own list. The postal name versus municipal boundary problem belongs to Littleton.
One more refusal, and it is a distinction rather than a silence. Another of our California pages is built on mutual water companies, and it is genuinely a different subject: there, a city holds 93 per cent of one mutual company and 68 per cent of another, so the shareholder is the local authority. Here the shareholder is the householder, and a consumption allowance is denominated in shares. We have kept the two apart deliberately and this page does not explain what a mutual water company is in general terms.
Also refused. Any connection fee comparison with the other city we wrote about this week, whose impact fees climb on a published four year ladder. Those are charges. These are share purchases, and a page that treats 33,000 dollars of stock as though it were a fee would be misleading in the reader favour rather than against it, which is still misleading. Drought stage and watering restrictions, which are live settings and are covered on several of our Colorado pages already. Lead, treatment process and water quality, none of which we opened.
The disagreement, restated, and two fetch notes
The water development fee is published at two different rates on the same website and the gap is 6,000 dollars on a single house. We have printed both, said which is better evidenced, and declined to declare a winner. If a figure on this page is going to decide a spend, that is the one to confirm first.
Two notes on sourcing. The City of Lakewood website refuses automated requests and redirects to a second address that also refuses them, so it was read through a browser instead. Its homepage statistics block, which reports resident and park counts, extracts as a row of zeros because the figures animate on scroll, and none of those numbers is used here. Every figure on this page comes from The Consolidated Mutual Water Company, which publishes normally.
No office, crew, address or response time of ours is stated for Lakewood, and no coverage claim is made beyond what our Colorado page already sets out. Not every Lakewood address is a Consolidated Mutual address, and none of the share arithmetic here applies to one that is not. Start with the company rates page and its tap sales page, and read both before relying on either. For work on this side of it, see our drain cleaning page or get in touch.
Everything above was read at the time of writing. The company states that rates are subject to change with or without notice, and a tiered billing method described as taking effect on 1 June 2026 is new enough to be worth checking. Nothing here is a quotation, a legal opinion or a substitute for asking the body that holds the pen.