Plumber Alpharetta: 3 Pipes, 3 Owners, 1 Front Garden
Search the City of Alpharetta website for a water rate and you will not find one. Search it for a sewer department and you will not find that either. The city runs no water utility and no sewer utility. What it does run is stormwater, and it issues your plumbing permit. Everything else belongs to Fulton County.
That split is not trivia. It decides who you call, whose rules apply to your repair, and which of two very different billing systems your leak lands in. This page sets out the County water and sewer structure, the City stormwater boundary, and the one piece of arithmetic that changes how urgently an Alpharetta household should treat a dripping irrigation line.
Who owns what under an Alpharetta property
Fulton County supplies the drinking water and takes the sanitary sewage, and it runs the backflow prevention programme that governs both. The County is explicit that it provides drinking water only to North Fulton, north of the Chattahoochee River, and that everywhere else in the county is served by the City of Atlanta.
The City of Alpharetta runs the storm drainage system and issues the trade permits, including plumbing, through its own online portal. Fulton County confirms the division from its side: its emergency contacts page tells North Fulton residents to take stormwater issues to their city of residence and sanitary sewer concerns to the County.
There is a pleasing oddity in the arrangement. Fulton County Water Resources Division is itself based at 11575 Maxwell Road in Alpharetta, and that is the address the County publishes for its Backflow Prevention Coordinator and for leak adjustment submissions. The county water operation sits inside the city whose own website has no water section.
For a homeowner the practical rule is short. If it is drinkable or it is sewage, it is the County. If it is rain, it is the City. If it is on your side of the meter or your side of the right of way, it is generally yours.
The tiers are personal, and they only exist for seven months
Fulton County bills bi-monthly and uses an inclining block structure for residential water, but only from 1 April to 31 October. The thresholds are not fixed gallon amounts. They are percentages of your own base consumption, which the County calculates from your winter average between 1 November and 31 March, combining outdoor meter readings with indoor use.
Tier 1 covers everything up to 130 per cent of that base. Tier 2 runs from 131 to 200 per cent. Tier 3 is everything over 200 per cent. A new residence with no winter history is assigned a base of 16,200 gallons until it has one.
The County describes the design intent openly: the tiered system is meant to encourage efficient outdoor use without raising the cost of base consumption, because systems peak in summer when irrigation runs. It is a demand management tool aimed at sprinklers, and it succeeds at that.
Here is the consequence for a leak, and this reading is ours rather than the County. Because your allowance is calibrated to a period that has already closed, a leak that starts in April is judged against a baseline set before it existed, so it climbs through all three tiers as fast as the water runs. We are not going to tell you what happens in the other direction, because the County does not publish the rate that applies between November and March, and we are not guessing at it.
Why the sewer line is the expensive half of an indoor leak
Sewer in Fulton County is a bi-monthly service charge plus a volume charge on every thousand gallons that passes the water meter. In 2025 that volume charge is $8.55 per 1,000 gallons. Tier 1 water in the same year is $4.51 per 1,000 gallons.
Put those two together, which the County does not do for you, and an indoor leak in tier 1 costs about $13.06 per thousand gallons, of which roughly 65 per cent is the sewer charge rather than the water. The arithmetic is ours; the two rates are the County published figures. A running toilet in Alpharetta is mostly a sewer bill.
Outdoor water flips the problem and the County has built the answer into its own tariff. It allows a secondary dedicated irrigation meter, which it states is not subject to sewer charges, on the reasoning that irrigation water goes into the soil rather than back to be treated. Irrigation water is priced at $9.02 per 1,000 gallons in 2025, which is exactly the tier 3 rate.
So compare the same outdoor gallon two ways. Through the house meter at tier 3 it costs $9.02 of water plus $8.55 of sewer volume on water that never reaches a sewer, or $17.57. Through a dedicated irrigation meter it costs $9.02. By our arithmetic that is about 95 per cent more for identical water, which is why an underground sprinkler leak on the house meter is the most expensive leak in this county.
What the numbers have done since 2023, and what happens next
The bi-monthly water service charge on a five eighths or three quarter inch meter runs $9.71 in 2023, $10.20 in 2024, $10.71 in 2025 and $11.25 in 2026. A one inch meter runs $17.80, $18.69, $19.62 and $20.60 across the same years, and a one and a half inch meter $25.07, $26.33, $27.64 and $29.02.
The sewer service charge matches the water service charge exactly at every step, so a standard residential account carries two identical fixed charges before a drop moves. Water tier 1 runs $4.10, $4.30, $4.51 and $4.74. Tier 2 runs $5.10, $5.36, $5.63 and $5.91. Tier 3 runs $8.18, $8.59, $9.02 and $9.47. Sewer volume runs $7.76, $8.15, $8.55 and $8.98.
On 1 October 2025 the Board of Commissioners approved a 5 per cent increase to the water and sewer volumetric rate for each of the following two years, effective 1 January 2026 and 1 January 2027, which the County attributes to funding capital improvement projects.
Read that carefully, because the word volumetric is doing real work. The increases the County announced attach to the per gallon charges rather than to the fixed service charges. That is the half of the bill a leak inflates, so the cost of not finding a leak rises with each of those steps even if your habits do not change.
- Adjustments are available upon qualification for leaks classified as non-routine and not preventable by proper maintenance
- The repair must be completed before the request is submitted
- A copy of a plumber or contractor repair bill must accompany the request
- If you repaired it yourself, a copy of the receipt for materials purchased must accompany it instead
- The County states that the form is not a guarantee that a credit will be applied
- In most cases a credit will reduce and not eliminate a bill, and you remain responsible for the remainder
- Any credit issued is reflected on your next bill
What not preventable by proper maintenance means for you
That phrase is the whole test and it is worth sitting with, because it is a different and harder standard than the exclusion lists other cities publish. Some utilities tell you which causes are ineligible and let everything else through. Fulton asks instead whether reasonable maintenance would have stopped it.
A supply line that fails without warning inside a wall reads very differently under that test from a shut off valve that has been weeping for a year, or an irrigation head that has been broken since last season. The evidence that separates them is largely what your plumber writes on the invoice, which is the same document the County requires you to attach.
The practical order of operations therefore matters. Fix it first, because the County will not consider a request before the repair is done. Get an invoice that describes the fault rather than only the price. Submit promptly, and treat the credit as a partial reduction rather than a reset, because the County says so in plain terms.
Stormwater is the one water system the city itself owns
Alpharetta operates under a Phase I Large Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System permit, regulated under the Clean Water Act through the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System and administered by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division. The City publishes its inventory: 8,000 stormwater structures including manholes, catch basins and headwalls, 127 miles of stormwater pipe, and 65 stormwater quality or quantity management facilities such as ponds and engineered swales.
The maintenance boundary is stated directly. Public Works maintains all of the stormwater infrastructure on City property and within the public right of way. Generally, structures on private property are the responsibility of the property owner, though the City notes that in some residential areas it maintains beyond the right of way and points to an Extent of Service Policy document for the detail.
The City also names the failure modes it is guarding against, and they are not cosmetic. Unmaintained stormwater infrastructure, it says, can lead to sinkholes, roadway collapses and flooding. A private pipe or basin failing on your land sits on your side of that sentence.
Drainage, maintenance and flooding issues are reported to the City through SeeClickFix, a third party reporting service the City has adopted. That is the correct route for a blocked public catch basin, and the wrong route for a blocked private yard drain, which is a job rather than a report.
Two more places the county and the city divide the work
Backflow prevention is a County programme and it runs on the containment method, isolating each individual service connection from the distribution line with an approved device. Fulton classifies every service by degree of potential hazard into high, medium and low, using criteria including the amount of water used, the existence or potential for cross connections, piping system complexity, the nature of the business and the materials handled on site.
The County describes the difference between the classes precisely. A high hazard could introduce contaminants, meaning substances that could create a health hazard. A medium hazard could introduce pollutants, meaning substances affecting colour, odour or taste without creating a health hazard. The device required is determined by the County based on that classification, and all containment devices should be installed as close as possible to the service meter.
The customer responsibilities are installation of approved devices, annual testing and maintenance, and reporting results to the County. Testable devices must be tested and if necessary repaired annually, by a certified tester, with results submitted through the County online reporting system.
Permits go the other way. The City of Alpharetta issues electrical, low voltage, plumbing and mechanical trade permits through its own web portal, where subcontractors apply and then track the status of permits and inspections. We are not printing a permit fee, because the City fee schedule was not among the pages read and an invented figure is worse than no figure.
Call the right government
Sewage or drinking water goes to Fulton County. Drainage and flooding go to the City. Getting this wrong costs a day.
Treat indoor leaks as sewer bills
The sewer volume charge is nearly double tier 1 water, so most of what an indoor leak costs you is the sewer side.
Ask about an irrigation meter
The County allows a dedicated irrigation meter not subject to sewer charges. On outdoor water the difference is large.
Know your April exposure
Summer tiers are set against your own winter average. A fault that begins after the base is fixed climbs the tiers quickly.
Get an invoice that explains the fault
The leak adjustment test is whether proper maintenance would have prevented it, and the invoice is your evidence.
Separate private drainage from public
The City maintains what is on City property and in the right of way. Private structures are generally the owner problem.
How Alpharetta compares with its neighbours
North Fulton is one water system with several city governments layered on top of it, which is why a plumber Alpharetta homeowners hire may be working under different rules two miles up the road. Our Roswell page covers the immediate neighbour to the south, and our Atlanta page covers the utility that Fulton County itself names as the supplier for everywhere south of the Chattahoochee.
The mechanism is worth comparing across states too, because the winter average idea shows up in more than one place and does different work each time. Our Camarillo page describes a city where residential sewer is a flat charge that ignores your meter entirely, which is the opposite design decision to Fulton, where the sewer volume charge is the dominant number on an indoor leak.
What all of these have in common is that none of it is standard. Whether your sewer bill tracks your water, whether your tiers are absolute or personal, whether irrigation can be metered separately, and which government answers the phone are all local answers. The right plumbing decision genuinely changes with them.
Plumber Alpharetta: the questions a three way split creates
Answers built only from what the City of Alpharetta and Fulton County publish. Where we have done arithmetic on published rates, the sentence says so.
Fulton County. The City of Alpharetta operates no water utility and no sanitary sewer utility, and its website carries no rate schedule for either. Fulton County provides drinking water to North Fulton, north of the Chattahoochee River, which includes Alpharetta, and takes the sanitary sewage. The City runs the storm drainage system and issues plumbing and other trade permits.
Fulton County. Its published sanitary sewer number for North Fulton customer service and after hours is 404-612-3061. For drinking water emergencies in North Fulton the County publishes 770-640-3040. Stormwater and drainage issues go the other way, to the City of Alpharetta, which takes reports through SeeClickFix. The County itself directs North Fulton residents to their city of residence for stormwater.
Against your own consumption rather than a fixed gallon figure. The County calculates a base, described as your winter average, from your usage between 1 November and 31 March, combining outdoor meter readings with indoor use. During the summer period from 1 April to 31 October, tier 1 covers up to 130 per cent of that base, tier 2 covers 131 to 200 per cent and tier 3 covers everything over 200 per cent. A new residence with no history is assigned a base of 16,200 gallons.
We do not know and we are not going to state one. The County publishes that its inclining block structure is effective during the summer months of April through October, and the rate pages read do not set out the charge that applies between 1 November and 31 March. Ask Fulton County Water and Sewer Billing, which the County lists as 404-612-6830 for North Fulton.
Because two charges move together. Every thousand gallons past your meter draws a water charge and a sewer volume charge, and in 2025 the sewer volume charge of $8.55 per thousand gallons is nearly double the $4.51 tier 1 water rate. By our arithmetic on those two published figures, an indoor leak in tier 1 costs about $13.06 per thousand gallons and roughly 65 per cent of that is sewer. If the leak is outdoors and on the house meter, you are also paying sewer charges on water that never reaches a sewer.
Fulton County allows it. It states that customers may have a secondary dedicated irrigation meter installed which is not subject to the sewer charges, on the reasoning that irrigation water goes into the soil rather than back for treatment, and that this may represent substantial savings during the warmer months. Irrigation water is priced at the tier 3 rate, $9.02 per thousand gallons in 2025. Applications go to Fulton County Public Works.
Yes, but on a narrow test. Adjustments are available upon qualification for leaks classified as non-routine and not preventable by proper maintenance. You must complete the repair first, then submit the leak adjustment request form with a copy of a plumber or contractor repair bill, or a receipt for materials if you did the work yourself. The County states the form is not a guarantee, and that in most cases a credit reduces rather than eliminates a bill.
Yes, on a published schedule. On 1 October 2025 the Board of Commissioners approved a 5 per cent increase to the water and sewer volumetric rate for each of the next two years, effective 1 January 2026 and 1 January 2027, which the County attributes to funding capital improvement projects. Note that the announced increases attach to the volumetric rates, which are the part of the bill a leak inflates.
The City of Alpharetta maintains all stormwater infrastructure on City property and within the public right of way, and it publishes an inventory of 8,000 structures, 127 miles of pipe and 65 management facilities. Generally, structures on private property are the responsibility of the property owner, although the City notes that in some residential areas it maintains beyond the right of way and directs residents to its Extent of Service Policy for the detail.
That is a Fulton County determination, not a city one. The County evaluates every service connection for degree of potential hazard and classifies it high, medium or low, using criteria including water use, existing and potential cross connections, piping complexity, the nature of the business and the materials handled. It then determines the required device. Containment devices should be installed as close as possible to the service meter, and testable devices must be tested annually by a certified tester with results reported to the County.
The City of Alpharetta. It issues electrical, low voltage, plumbing and mechanical trade permits through its own online permitting portal, where subcontractors register, apply, and track the status of permits and inspections. We are not quoting a fee amount because the City fee schedule was not among the pages we read.
We do not state a hardness figure for Alpharetta. Fulton County publishes annual water quality reports, and those reports rather than any third party page are the place to get a constituent value from. If you are sizing a softener or diagnosing scale, use the current County report and note the date it covers.
Sources, arithmetic and what this page does not claim
Related work on this site: leak detection, drain cleaning, sewer line repair and emergency plumbing. The state picture is on our Georgia plumbing page.
The statement that the City of Alpharetta operates no water or sewer utility is based on walking the entire published City sitemap, which lists 182 pages and contains no water or sewer service section of any kind. The division of responsibilities is confirmed from the County side by the Fulton County Emergency Repairs page, which directs North Fulton residents to their city of residence for stormwater and to the County for sanitary sewer, and which states that Fulton County provides drinking water only north of the Chattahoochee River with all other areas served by the City of Atlanta.
Every water and sewer rate above, the bi-monthly billing, the inclining block structure and its 1 April to 31 October window, the winter average base period of 1 November to 31 March, the combining of outdoor with indoor readings, the three tier thresholds at 130 and 200 per cent of base, the 16,200 gallon base for new residences, the service charges by meter size, the sewer volume charges, the irrigation rates and the 5 per cent volumetric increases approved on 1 October 2025 come from the Fulton County Water Rates page.
The leak adjustment terms come from the Fulton County Water Leak Adjustment Request page: that adjustments are available upon qualification for leaks classified as non-routine and not preventable by proper maintenance, that the repair must be completed first, that a plumber or contractor repair bill or a materials receipt must accompany the request, that the form is not a guarantee, and that a credit will in most cases reduce rather than eliminate a bill. The statement that a dedicated irrigation meter is not subject to sewer charges, and the reasoning given for it, come from the County Request an Irrigation Meter page.
The backflow hazard classification system, the containment method, the installation guidance, the customer responsibilities and the annual certified testing requirement come from the County Backflow Prevention page, which is also the source for the Water Resources Division address at 11575 Maxwell Road, Alpharetta.
The stormwater material comes from the City of Alpharetta Stormwater Program page and its Infrastructure Maintenance page: the Phase I Large MS4 designation under NPDES and its administration by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, the inventory of 8,000 structures, 127 miles of pipe and 65 management facilities, the statement that Public Works maintains all stormwater infrastructure on City property and within the public right of way, the statement that structures on private property are generally the property owner responsibility together with the note that the City maintains beyond the right of way in some residential areas.
The same two City pages supply the warning about sinkholes, roadway collapses and flooding, and the use of SeeClickFix for reporting. The trade permit arrangements come from the City Trade Permits page.
The arithmetic in this page is ours and is labelled as ours in the copy as well as here. That an indoor leak in tier 1 costs about $13.06 per thousand gallons is our addition of the 2025 water tier 1 rate and the 2025 sewer volume rate. That roughly 65 per cent of that is the sewer charge is our division of the same two figures.
That outdoor water through the house meter at tier 3 costs $17.57 against $9.02 through a dedicated irrigation meter, a difference of about 95 per cent, is our comparison of published rates. The observation that a leak beginning in April is measured against a baseline set before it existed is our reading of the published base period, not a County statement.
Refused and left blank rather than estimated: the water rate that applies between 1 November and 31 March, because the County states the inclining block runs April through October and does not publish the winter rate on the pages read; every plumbing permit and plan check fee amount, because the City fee schedule was not opened; water hardness and every drinking water constituent value, because the Fulton County annual water quality report was not opened.
Also refused: the contents of the City Extent of Service Policy and Private Pond Maintenance documents, because neither PDF was opened; any count of sanitary sewer overflows; and the service charges for meters of two inches and larger in 2025 and 2026, because that table row was truncated in the read and a partial row is not a figure.
No office, address, crew, response time, guarantee or coverage claim of ours is stated for Alpharetta, and no testimonial or performance statistic appears anywhere above. The Maxwell Road address that appears is Fulton County own published address for its Water Resources Division, not ours. Rates, ordinances and programmes change, and the volumetric rates above are scheduled to change in January 2026 and January 2027, so confirm current requirements with Fulton County Public Works or City of Alpharetta Community Development before relying on anything here.