Plumber Bothell: The City Where You Have to Look Everything Up
Most city pages on this site can open with a sentence like “the utility that serves you is the city”. In Bothell that sentence is false for most addresses. The City names six different water and sewer providers operating inside its limits and the immediate vicinity, and it adds a warning most people read past: your water and your sewer providers may be different.
The same pattern repeats everywhere you look. The stormwater charge does not arrive on the utility bill at all. The number you call before you dig depends on which power company you are with. And under part of the downtown there is soil and groundwater the City is still actively cleaning up under state orders.
None of that is a complaint about Bothell. It is a checklist. Everything below comes from what the City of Bothell publishes, read in August 2026, with the sources named at the foot and the things we refused to state named beside them.
Start here, before anything else
The City Publishes a Directory Because You Genuinely Cannot Guess
The City of Bothell maintains a page whose entire purpose is telling residents who supplies them. It states that multiple water and sewer districts operate in the City and the immediate vicinity, that you need to determine your service provider before requesting service, and that your water and sewer providers may be different.
The directory it publishes lists six: Alderwood Water and Wastewater District, Bothell Water and Sewer, Cross Valley Water District, Northshore Utility District, Silver Lake Water and Sewer District, and Woodinville Water District. The same six are listed for water and again for sewer, which is exactly why the two can differ at one address.
The City also runs an interactive map with a utilities layer, and publishes step by step instructions for using it: open the layers window, expand utilities, tick the water markings, search your address. That is the authoritative answer for a specific property, and it is the first ten minutes of any Bothell plumbing question that involves a bill or a permit.
One publisher, two different counts, and it is worth noticing
The provider directory names six organisations. The City water service page, describing hydrant use permits, says instead that the City of Bothell is served by four different water districts and points to a water district map. Both statements are the City of Bothell talking about the same city on the same website.
We are not going to reconcile them, because reconciling them would mean deciding which two organisations do not count, and that is precisely the kind of guess that sends somebody to the wrong office. What the disagreement does prove is the underlying point. In Bothell the number of possible answers is large enough that the publisher itself keeps two versions of it.
The practical rule that follows is simple. Never accept a second hand answer about who serves a Bothell address, including from a previous owner, a letting agent or a neighbour across the street. Check the map, check the bill, and check water and sewer separately.
- On the water side the City serves 8,500 households and businesses, and states plainly that other water utilities provide service to the remaining households and businesses in Bothell. It is a large provider in its own city, not the only one.
- It is responsible for more than 93 miles of water mains, four reservoirs, four pumping stations, and the bi-monthly reading of over 4,000 meters.
- On the sewer side the Sewer Section operates and maintains 62 miles of gravity main, five lift stations, and more than 2,500 lineal feet of force main.
- Its published sewer services are maintaining lift stations, cleaning gravity mains, running the fats, oils and grease programme, responding to system emergencies, and customer service. Five things, listed in that order.
- The City states it obtains its water from Seattle Public Utilities. Where that water comes from before that is a subject this site already covers in detail on the Seattle page, and it is deliberately not repeated here.
A fact about digging, not about drinking
Part of Downtown Bothell Sits on Ground the City Is Still Cleaning
The City runs a downtown contaminated soil and groundwater cleanup as a component of its Downtown Revitalization Plan. Environmental assessment work began in 2008 with historic research and field investigations to determine the nature and extent of contamination in soil and groundwater on several city owned properties. Cleanup work began in summer 2010 and the City says it currently continues.
Cleanup of solvent contamination is underway at three sites: a former dry cleaning premises next to the City Hall block, a site at the eastern end of the Park at Bothell Landing, and a former service centre. The City reports source area soil removal completing at the first in early 2024 with in situ treatment starting in September 2025, formal remedial design advancing at the second in 2025 with remedial action in 2026, and bioremediation continuing at the third under a mixed use complex redeveloped in early 2025.
Four other city sites have been closed out. The City secured Satisfaction of Agreed Order determinations from the Department of Ecology for three of them in 2023, and a No Further Action determination from the Pollution Liability Insurance Agency for a school district property in the same year.
Why a plumbing page cares about a soil cleanup
Because plumbing work in a downtown is excavation. A service replacement, a sewer repair, a trench for a new connection: each one takes out soil and, below the water table, produces water that has to go somewhere. On ground carrying a regulated cleanup, the soil you remove and the water you pump are not ordinary spoil and ordinary runoff.
The scale of the effort is a fair proxy for the seriousness. The City reports securing remedial action grants totalling about $9.4 million from the Department of Ecology, with Ecology paying or committed to pay 50 per cent of eligible costs, plus a $200,000 brownfields cleanup grant from the United States Environmental Protection Agency for one site. The King County Brownfields Program separately investigated groundwater impacts caused by former dry cleaning businesses in the downtown area.
What this does not tell you is whether any particular address is affected, and this page does not guess. The sites the City names are city owned parcels in the downtown. If you are planning excavation anywhere near them, the question belongs to the City and to Ecology before it belongs to anybody holding a shovel.
It also says nothing whatever about drinking water in Bothell. This is an account of a land cleanup published by the landowner. It is not a measurement of anything at a tap, and it must not be read as one.
Your Stormwater Charge Does Not Arrive on Your Utility Bill
City Council set the 2025 and 2026 rates on 26 November 2024, and the increases were not uniform: 6.25 per cent for water, 4.25 per cent for sewer and 5.75 per cent for storm and surface water, in each of those two years.
The water and sewer increases apply only to City of Bothell water and sewer customers, which given six providers is a genuinely narrower group than the population of Bothell. They appear on each of the six bi-monthly billing statements per calendar year.
The stormwater increase behaves completely differently. The City states that stormwater rate increases impact anyone within city limits, and that they appear on semi-annual King and Snohomish County property tax billings. So the stormwater charge is not on the utility bill, it is on a property tax bill, and which county sends it depends on which side of the county line the property sits.
The reason given for each increase is worth reading, because they are different reasons. Water pays for repair and replacement of existing facilities. Storm and surface water pays for compliance with federal permit requirements, repairing infrastructure and environmental projects. And the sewer increase of 4.25 per cent is stated to be required to offset an annual 5.75 per cent increase in the cost of wastewater treatment paid to King County.
That last one is the most useful sentence on the rates page. The City is not the treatment authority. It buys treatment wholesale, the wholesale price is rising faster than the retail rate it charges, and it says so in public. A Bothell sewer bill is partly a King County bill travelling under a different name.
The table nobody reads until it applies to them
Four Situations Where the Ordinary Sewer Calculation Does Not Apply
Bothell bills residential sewer on a route charge plus a winter average of water use, with the first four hundred cubic feet not billed, and the resulting figure held for all six billing cycles of the following year. That much is the arithmetic, and this site covers winter averaging as a general subject elsewhere.
What is worth reading here is what the City does when the ordinary method cannot run. Its published policy for single family residences covers four cases, cited to the sanitary sewer ordinance. New homes and properties that change hands are billed at the system average charge until use is established, which means a new owner inherits an average rather than a history.
Customers who are not City water customers, which in Bothell is a very ordinary situation, are billed at the system average unless they supply a copy of the billing statement from their water provider for the qualifying winter averaging period. Doing that paperwork is optional, and it is the difference between being billed on your own consumption and being billed on the city as a whole.
The leak adjustment, and the three year back-bill
Where a leak adjustment has been granted, the City states that billing is per the adjusted winter volume and that it will factor the leak adjustment into the calculation for the sewer rate. That is a detail with real money in it. A leak corrected on the water side would otherwise sit in your winter average and follow you through the whole of the next year on the sewer side as well.
The fourth case is the one to read twice. For unbilled existing service, the City policy is to back-bill three years from the time of discovery of an unbilled sewer connection, and it cites a state statute of limitations for that period. A connection that was never picked up by billing is not a windfall. It is a three year invoice waiting for the day somebody notices.
Both of those turn on knowing whether a leak is real and when it started, which is a diagnostic question rather than a billing one. Our leak detection page covers what can and cannot be established, and the general household symptoms are set out there rather than here.
The tidiest contact tree we have found in Washington
Three Different Household Problems, One Number, One Fallback
The City answers three separate household questions in its sewer FAQ with an identical routing. A sewage smell in the house or yard, sewage backing up in a toilet or sink, and finding a rat or mouse in the toilet all get the same instruction: call Public Works between 7am and 3:30pm Monday to Friday.
The fallback is what makes it unusual. If you need immediate assistance outside regular business hours, the City says the police non-emergency line can route your call to the person best able to address the issue. Not a utility answering service. The police non-emergency desk, acting as the out of hours switchboard for the sewer system.
The rodent answer adds two steps before the phone call, and they are the right two: keep the toilet lid down and close the bathroom door. For flooding the City separates the tiers explicitly. Minor flooding goes to Public Works during business hours or the non-emergency line after them, and major flooding goes to 9-1-1.
Even calling before you dig has a Bothell answer
The City confirms the obligation and then splits it by power company. Puget Sound Energy customers are told to call 811. Snohomish County Public Utility District customers are given a different ten digit number instead. Same city, same law, two different phone calls, decided by a utility relationship that has nothing to do with plumbing.
The rest of the dig notification subject is a single topic on this site and lives on our sewer line repair page, so it is not rebuilt here. One clause on the City page is worth carrying across though, because people are surprised by it constantly: the locate service marks buried lines from the street to the house, many buried lines under your property belong to you, and locating the ones you own has to be done privately.
Winter adds the other Bothell reminder. The City publishes its own guidance on preventing frozen pipes and is blunt about the cost, describing repairs that are always costly and sometimes run to tens of thousands. Our guide on how to prevent frozen pipes covers the method, and the City page covers the local emphasis.
- Bothell has over 8,500 public storm drains, designed to capture rainwater and release it into the nearest stream, wetland or river.
- Two street sweepers cover more than 310 lane miles across twelve sweeping zones, swept monthly Monday to Friday. In the autumn that rises to seven days a week specifically to reduce the risk of flooding from blocked storm drains.
- Blowing or sweeping leaves into the street is prohibited, and the City cites its own municipal code provision on sweeping litter into the gutter, a clause carrying an ordinance number from 1973. It asks residents to rake rather than blow, and to work from the curb rather than standing in the road.
- The City is candid that its own crews do blow leaves into the street near parks, trails, sewer lift stations, water reservoirs, pump stations and public buildings, as part of a coordinated operation with a sweeper following behind. Seeing staff do it is not permission to do it.
- Clogged storm drains are reported to Public Works during business hours or through the City online request form, with the non-emergency line after hours and 9-1-1 for an emergency. The City also runs an adopt a drain programme for residents willing to keep one clear.
Bothell plumbing questions, answered from the City’s own pages
Seven questions where the Bothell answer is genuinely different from the generic one, each traced to something the City of Bothell publishes.
Through the City rather than by asking around. The City publishes a find your utility provider page listing six organisations, and an interactive map with a utilities layer you can search by address. The critical warning on that page is that your water and sewer service providers may be different, so the question has to be asked twice. The City also publishes a sewer districts map and answers the question am I a City of Bothell sewer customer by pointing at it.
Because it is not billed there. The City states that storm and surface water rate increases impact anyone within city limits and that they appear on semi-annual King and Snohomish County property tax billings. Water and sewer arrive on the bi-monthly utility statement, six times a year, with statements sent in the last week of odd months and payment due on the 20th of even months. Stormwater arrives with your property taxes, from whichever county you are in.
Because the residential sewer charge is set from a winter average of water use and then held for the whole of the following year. The City calculates it from three bi-monthly consumption figures in the winter period, divides by three and rounds up, and does not bill the first four hundred cubic feet. The published note is explicit that the sewer charge remains the same for all six billing cycles of the year it applies to.
The system average, until your own use is established. The City policy table lists changes in property ownership alongside new homes and applies the same rule to both. If you are not a City water customer there is a second route worth knowing: you can be billed on actual usage rather than the system average if you provide a copy of the billing statement from your water provider for the qualifying winter averaging period.
Three years. The City policy for unbilled existing service is to back-bill three years from the time of discovery of an unbilled sewer connection, and it cites a state statute of limitations for the period. That is worth knowing before a purchase or a subdivision, because the liability attaches to the connection rather than to whoever failed to notice it.
Nothing on this page says or implies that. What the City publishes is an account of a land cleanup on city owned downtown properties, covering soil and groundwater, with assessment from 2008 and cleanup work from 2010 that it says currently continues. It is a landowner describing remediation of its own parcels, not a measurement of treated drinking water, and we did not open the City water quality reporting.
The City gives one answer for three different problems. During business hours, 7am to 3:30pm Monday to Friday, Public Works handles a sewage smell, a sewage backup and even a rodent in the toilet. Outside those hours, the City says the police non-emergency line can route your call to the person best able to address the issue. Major flooding goes to 9-1-1 immediately rather than through either route.
Sources, and what we refused to state
The multiple provider statement, the warning that water and sewer providers may be different, the six named organisations and the interactive map instructions are from the City find your utility provider page. The 8,500 households served, the Seattle Public Utilities purchase, the 93 miles of water main, four reservoirs, four pumping stations and 4,000 meters, and the four water districts statement that sits alongside the directory of six, are from Water Service. The 62 miles of gravity main, five lift stations, 2,500 lineal feet of force main and the list of sewer services are from Sewer Service.
The council date of 26 November 2024, the three increase percentages, the statement that the sewer increase offsets a King County wastewater treatment cost increase, the billing cycle, the property tax route for stormwater and the four sewer special case policies including the three year back-bill are from Utility Rates. The assessment and cleanup history, the three active solvent sites, the in situ treatment and bioremediation statements, the closed out determinations and the grant figures are from Downtown Contaminated Soil and Groundwater Clean Up.
The contact routing for a sewage smell, a backup and a rodent, and the dig notification split between the two power utilities, are from the City sewer service questions. The 8,500 storm drains, 310 lane miles, twelve sweeping zones, autumn schedule, leaf blowing prohibition and reporting routes are from Flood Prevention, with the tiered reporting numbers repeated on Rain and Flooding. All read in August 2026.
Two host refusals, recorded rather than worked around. Two of the six providers the City names returned no response at all to our requests, so nothing whatever is stated here about their rules, rates or service areas. They appear on this page only because the City of Bothell lists them. The two districts that do publish readable sites were not read either, deliberately: describing one district’s rules and not another’s would be worse than describing none.
What else we refused, and why. No statement that any street, postcode or property is served by any particular provider, is inside or outside city limits, or is in one county rather than the other. Those are the address level questions the City map exists to answer. No claim that any downtown parcel other than the ones the City names is affected by the cleanup, and no characterisation of what any consent decree or agreed order requires, because we read the City project summary and not the orders themselves.
Bothell publishes a cross connection control programme with a municipal code reference, an annual testing duty and a certified tester list updated every March. We read that it exists and deliberately did not build it, because cross connection is a single subject on this site and is covered elsewhere. The same applies to the City fats, oils and grease programme, including the figure it publishes for the share of sewage overflows caused by grease, and to its recommendation about check valves in building sewer traps. Private pipe ownership in Puget Sound is an explicit running series on this site, covered on our Seattle and Everett pages, and Bothell deliberately does not join it.
No office, crew or response time of ours is stated for Bothell. Utility rates, billing policies, municipal code provisions and cleanup project status all change, and the cleanup in particular is described by the City as ongoing. Confirm current requirements with the City of Bothell Public Works or Utility Billing, and with your own water or sewer district, before relying on anything here.