Plumber Sedona: Your Water Company and Your Sewer Are Two Different Organisations
In most towns on this site one body supplies the water, bills you for the sewer and decides when the tap goes off. Sedona is not built that way. The water comes from a private company. The sewer comes from the City. They are separate organisations sending separate bills, and until recently that meant they had separate consequences too.
That changed on 1 February 2025. A tariff filed with the state regulator now allows the water company to disconnect your water because you did not pay the City for sewer. One valve, two creditors. It is the single most useful thing a Sedona household can know about its own utilities, and almost nobody knows it.
Everything below comes from documents the water company publishes: filed rate schedules, filed tariffs and its own customer pages, read in August 2026. Where a fact belongs to the City rather than the company, this page says so and stops, because the City website would not serve us a single page.
The instrument nobody mentions
A Water Company That Can Be Asked to Turn You Off Over a Sewer Bill
On 25 June 2024 Arizona Water Company and the City of Sedona signed an agreement for sharing information about water consumption and water service disconnection. The Arizona Corporation Commission approved it in Decision No. 79640 on 17 December 2024. The company filed the resulting tariff, DNP-103, on 26 December 2024, and it took effect on 1 February 2025 for the Sedona system.
The operative sentence is plain. The company will disconnect water service to a customer who is liable to the City for overdue sewer service charges at the premises where that customer receives water from the company and sewer service from the City. To do it, the company was granted a variance from a Commission rule, A.A.C. R14-2-410(A)(3), for the limited purpose of implementing that agreement.
None of this makes the water company your sewer creditor. It makes it the holder of the valve. The debt, the notice and the decision to ask all sit with the City, which is why the phone call that fixes it is never to the company first.
- The customer must be at least ninety days delinquent in payment of sewer service charges. Not late. Ninety days.
- The City must have offered a payment plan, and the customer must have rejected it or defaulted on it. A plan that was never offered does not satisfy this condition.
- The City must have notified the customer in writing and by posting notice at the premises, stating that water service will be disconnected no less than ten days after the date of that notice.
- Coming back is symmetrical. On the City receiving payment in full, or on a disconnected customer entering into a payment plan with the City, the company will reconnect under the terms of the agreement and its own normal procedures and timelines.
- Sedona is not alone in this. The company publishes six such tariffs, for Sedona, Casa Grande, Falcon Valley at San Manuel, White Tank at Buckeye, Miami at Globe and Apache Junction at Mesa. Sedona has its own decision number and its own filing.
Why a leak costs more than you calculate
Sedona Water Is Sold in Four Price Blocks, and Extra Water Is Sold at the Top One
The Sedona water rate is its own filed schedule, tariff NG-286, effective 1 August 2025. For a residential customer on the common five eighths by three quarter inch meter the minimum charge is $33.28, and consumption is then billed in four blocks per thousand gallons: $4.8638 up to 2,000 gallons, $6.8093 from 2,001 to 6,000, $7.7821 from 6,001 to 11,000 and $8.7549 above 11,000.
That structure changes the arithmetic of a running toilet or a weeping irrigation valve. Wasted water is never billed at the cheap rate, because it sits on top of everything you actually used. It is billed in whichever block you have been pushed into, and in a bad month that is the highest one at roughly 1.8 times the lowest.
The meter matters as well as the leak. On a three quarter inch meter the minimum charge rises to $49.93 but the cheapest block stretches to 3,000 gallons and the second to 9,000, so two neighbours with identical habits and different meters do not cross into the expensive water at the same point.
The same schedule prices commercial water very differently
On the commercial and construction rate the minimum charge for the smallest meter is the same $33.28, but the blocks are not. A commercial customer pays $6.8093 per thousand gallons from the very first gallon, which is the rate a household only reaches after 2,000. Industrial service is a flat $7.7821 for all gallons with no cheap block at all, and sales for resale are a flat $8.7549.
There is a practical reading for anyone running a short term rental, a studio or a small restaurant in Sedona. Which of those categories your account sits in is worth confirming with the company, because the difference between the residential and commercial first block is roughly forty per cent on the cheapest water you buy, every single month, before any leak.
One more line on that schedule is worth reading twice. The rates are stated to be subject to the company tariff schedules SC-265 for service charges and TC-243 for terms and conditions, which means the price of water is only ever part of what the filed documents say you owe.
Everything Else Has a Filed Price, and the List Is Short Enough to Learn
Tariff SC-265 covers the Northern Region service area, which the document names as Lakeside, Overgaard, Sedona, Pinewood and Rimrock. It was filed on 15 August 2025 with an effective date of 1 August 2025, and it cancels an earlier schedule that had been running since an original filing in April 1983.
Establishing an account costs $32.00 each time. Reconnection after disconnection for delinquency is also $32.00 each time. A returned payment for insufficient funds is $25.00, and a meter re-read is $25.00.
An after hours service call-out is $35.00 when it happens outside regular working hours, on Saturdays, Sundays or holidays, and the tariff attaches that charge only where the visit is at the request of the customer. The company restates the same figure in its own customer questions, which is a rare case of two documents on one site agreeing exactly.
Guarantee deposits are capped rather than fixed. The residential maximum is two times the average bill for the customer class, and the non-residential maximum is two and a half times that customer’s estimated maximum monthly bill.
Getting a new service line and meter installed is priced by meter size, and the two figures are separated. The service line is $565.00 for a five eighths by three quarter inch or a three quarter inch meter, $629.00 at one inch, $699.00 at one and a half inches and $1,054.00 for a two inch turbine or compound. The meter itself is charged at actual cost on top, so the total is stated in the tariff as varying.
Not a courtesy, a schedule
Some of What This Company Owes a Leaking House Is Written Down
Alongside the money, the company files a set of best management practice tariffs. Two of them name the Verde Valley system, Sedona, Pinewood and Rimrock, explicitly, which means they apply here by name rather than by inference.
Under BMP 3.7 the company tracks usage for each customer and notifies the customer when use looks excessive for that billing period and time of year. It identifies high consumption accounts, investigates each one to determine a possible cause, and contacts the customer by telephone, email, post or in person as soon as practical to minimise the loss. The tariff adds that the customer is not required to do anything to receive this notification.
Under BMP 3.6 the company handles high water use enquiries as calls arrive, with staff trained on typical causes. Then the clause worth remembering: on request by the customer, or where the company determines it is warranted, a trained field technician will be sent to the residence to conduct a leak detection inspection.
The meter question, and where this page stops
BMP 4.2 sets out what the company does with meters. It tests, repairs or replaces them under its own guidelines using gallonage and time in service, it tests a meter on a customer request or in response to a complaint using meter testing equipment, and it randomly selects meters to set replacement criteria for each system.
The detail that matters to anyone chasing a small continuous loss is the resolution. All new meters of one inch and smaller register usage in one gallon increments. Meters of one and a half to four inches register in ten gallon increments, and six inch and larger in hundreds. A domestic meter in Sedona is therefore capable of showing a very small movement.
Testing it has a filed price. The service charge schedule gives no charge for the first test, then $25.00 or actual time and material, whichever is greater, for a second test for the same customer within any twelve month period. The exception is the important half: no meter testing fee is imposed at all if the meter is found to be in error by more than three per cent, which the tariff cites to A.A.C. R14-2-408(F).
How you read a meter to work out whether something is running is a single subject on this site and it is not rebuilt here. It lives on our leak detection page, and the general symptoms are set out in our guide to the signs of a hidden water leak. What this page adds is local: in Sedona that reading is happening on a meter with one gallon resolution, and asking the company to prove it is free the first time.
The second home question, answered as billing rather than as plumbing
Turning the Water Off Does Not Turn the Bill Off
Sedona has a large stock of houses that stand empty for part of the year, and the company offers two different ways to stop using water. They are not interchangeable and the difference is money.
A Close Account with a final bill ends the service and renders a final bill. If you then re-establish service within twelve months you pay a re-establishment fee, and the tariff sets it at eight times the monthly minimum charge, or payment of the minimums since disconnection, whichever is less.
A Courtesy Off is the other route, used where a dwelling will be vacant temporarily. The service is turned off until you ask for it back. The catch is stated plainly by the company: during a Courtesy Off your minimum monthly bills continue to be rendered and are due and payable monthly. The water stops. The minimum charge does not.
Planning the visit is what makes it free
The company provides courtesy turn-on and turn-off during regular business hours at no charge, asking for at least three business days of notice, and states those hours as Monday to Thursday 7:30am to 5:00pm with alternating Fridays 7:30am to 4:00pm. Outside them the $35.00 after hours charge applies, which is the same figure the service charge tariff carries.
What to physically do to a house before leaving it for an Arizona summer is a different subject and one this site already answers at state level, so it is not repeated here. Our Arizona hub covers the departure routine. This section is only about which billing arrangement you are on while the house is empty, which is the part that quietly costs people money.
- A regulatory expense surcharge of $0.64 applies per meter under tariff RS-101 for the Northern Group, effective 1 August 2025. The striking part is that it is $0.64 at every meter size listed, from five eighths of an inch to ten inches. The cost of being regulated is not scaled to how much water you buy.
- A utility bill assistance discount of $10.00 per month is available to customers already enrolled in a utility assistance programme, on presenting a bill from another utility provider showing that participation.
- A military discount of $10.00 per month is available to active and reserve United States military and National Guard members, on presenting a valid military identification card.
- Alerts about leaks, scheduled repairs and anything else affecting service are sent by text or email, and the company states that current customers with a text enabled mobile number or email on file are automatically enrolled. It also promises a second message when service is restored, so an unexplained silence after an outage is worth a call.
How this differs from the rest of Arizona on this site
Sedona is not the only Arizona community here served by a private utility rather than a municipal department. Our Sun City page covers the other half of that story, which is how a price gets set at all: a rate case at the Arizona Corporation Commission, a published minimum duration and a public participation route. That material is deliberately not repeated here.
What Sedona adds is the other end of the same system. A rate case decides the numbers. The tariffs decide the conduct: when a technician comes out, what a meter test costs, when a deposit can be demanded, what happens to a vacant house, and whose unpaid bill can close your valve. Those documents are public, individually filed, individually dated and mostly unread.
Geographically the nearest comparison on this site is our Flagstaff page, an hour north and a very different arrangement. The useful habit for anyone moving between the two is to stop assuming that the body that sends the sewer bill is the body that controls the water, because in Sedona it is not, and since February 2025 that has had a consequence.
If a burst or a backup is happening right now, the ownership question can wait. Our emergency plumbing page covers what to do in the first ten minutes, and the company lists a Sedona division office on Coffee Pot Drive with an after hours telephone route for water service problems.
Sedona plumbing and water questions, answered from filed tariffs
Seven questions where the Sedona answer is genuinely different from the generic one, each traced to a document Arizona Water Company has filed or published.
A private company rather than a city department. Arizona Water Company runs the Sedona water system and lists a division office at 65 Coffee Pot Drive, Suite 7. Its rates and its rules of conduct are filed schedules lodged with the Arizona Corporation Commission, which is why the answers to most billing questions exist as public documents with numbers and effective dates rather than as policy on a web page.
Yes, under tariff DNP-103, which took effect on 1 February 2025 for the Sedona system after Commission Decision No. 79640. The company will disconnect water to a customer liable to the City for overdue sewer charges at the same premises. It is not automatic. The customer must be at least ninety days delinquent, the City must have offered a payment plan that was rejected or defaulted on, and the City must have given written notice and posted notice at the premises at least ten days before.
Through the City rather than the company. The tariff says the company reconnects on the City receiving payment in full from a disconnected customer, or on that customer entering into a payment plan with the City. Reconnection then follows the company’s normal procedures and timelines under its own tariffs. There is also a separate reconnection for delinquency charge of $32.00 in the service charge schedule.
Because Sedona water is sold in blocks and the extra water sits at the top of them. On the smallest residential meter the first 2,000 gallons are $4.8638 per thousand and anything above 11,000 is $8.7549 per thousand. A leak does not get billed at your average rate. It gets billed at the block it pushes you into, which is why a fortnight of a running fixture can look like a metering error when it is not.
Usually yes. The service charge tariff gives no charge for the first meter test. A second test for the same customer within any twelve month period is $25.00 or actual time and material, whichever is greater. Crucially, no meter testing fee is imposed at all if the meter is found to be in error by more than three per cent, a rule the tariff cites to A.A.C. R14-2-408(F). Separately, a trained field technician can be sent to the house for a leak detection inspection on request under BMP 3.6.
That is a billing decision before it is a plumbing one, and the two options behave differently. A Courtesy Off stops the water but the minimum monthly bills continue to be rendered and remain due monthly. Closing the account ends the billing but attracts a re-establishment fee if you come back within twelve months, set at eight times the monthly minimum or the minimums since disconnection, whichever is less. Either visit is free in business hours with three business days of notice.
The company has filed a tariff saying it will. Under BMP 3.7 it tracks usage per customer, identifies high consumption accounts, investigates the possible cause and contacts the customer by telephone, email, post or in person as soon as practical, and the tariff states the customer is not required to do anything to receive that notification. Treat it as a backstop rather than a monitor. A bill arrives monthly, and a fitting failing in an empty Sedona house does not.
Sources, and what we refused to state
The agreement of 25 June 2024, Commission Decision No. 79640 of 17 December 2024, the filing date of 26 December 2024 and the effective date of 1 February 2025, the variance from A.A.C. R14-2-410(A)(3), the operative disconnection sentence, the ninety day delinquency test, the offered and rejected payment plan condition, the written and posted ten day notice and the reconnection terms are all from tariff DNP-103 for the Sedona system. The existence of six such tariffs is from the company rates and tariffs index.
The residential, commercial, industrial and resale block rates, the minimum charges by meter size and the effective date of 1 August 2025 are from the Sedona general service water rate schedule. The establishment, reconnection, re-establishment, after hours, returned payment, meter re-read and meter test charges, the deposit maxima, the service line prices by meter size and the Northern Region system list are from tariff SC-265. The flat $0.64 per meter is from tariff RS-101.
The high water use duties are from BMP 3.7 and BMP 3.6, both of which name the Verde Valley system including Sedona. The meter testing, replacement and gallon increment rules are from BMP 4.2. The Courtesy Off and Close Account descriptions, the three business day notice and the business hours are from the company customer questions page, the two $10.00 discounts from its discount programmes page, the automatic alert enrolment and restoration message from its alerts page, and the division office address from the Sedona community page. All read in August 2026.
The City of Sedona is missing from this page on purpose. Every request to the City website, including its robots file, its home page and its department pages, was refused outright by the content delivery network in front of it. We therefore state nothing about the City sewer system, its rates, its connection rules, its wastewater plant or its ordinances, and nothing about the City is inferred from the water company documents beyond what those documents themselves say about the agreement between the two. The sewer half of this town is a genuine gap here, and it is recorded as a gap rather than filled by guesswork.
What else we refused, and why. No claim about which county, city or unincorporated area any address sits in, and no statement that a given property is inside the water company service area, because that is exactly the address level question only the company can answer. No figure from the system improvement benefits surcharge schedule: the scanned document is legible as to its existence and its systems but its rate table is not reliably readable, and an unreadable number is not a number.
The company also publishes a cross connection control tariff and a backflow prevention programme. We read that they exist and deliberately did not build them, because cross connection is a single subject on this site and is covered elsewhere. Nothing here restates how a household reads a meter step by step either, for the same reason. No water quality, hardness, arsenic, lead or copper result for Sedona or for any other system, no hook up fee, and no statement about how the rate is set, which is Sun City ground on this site and not rebuilt here.
No office, crew or response time of ours is stated for Sedona. Tariffs are amended, cancelled and superseded, and every document cited above carries its own filing and effective date for that reason. Confirm current terms with Arizona Water Company, with the City of Sedona for anything to do with sewer, and with the Arizona Corporation Commission for the filings themselves before relying on anything here.