Water coming up through the street. A wet patch in the sidewalk that will not dry. No pressure at the tap, or none at all. A broken water main in New York City goes from a nuisance to a flooded basement and a city notice faster than most owners expect, and the first hour matters more than anything that follows.
Here is what to do, in order, and what happens afterwards — including the DEP notice most people do not know is coming.
Not every wet street is a broken service line, and the difference decides who pays. Quick checks:
Whose pipe is it? This is the question almost everyone gets wrong. In New York City the property owner owns the water service line — the pipe running from the city main in the street to the building. That includes the length buried under the public sidewalk.
The city maintains the main in the street. Everything from that main to your building is yours to repair, and yours to pay for.
If DEP finds a leak on your service line — reported by you, by a neighbour, or spotted by an inspector — the city issues a notice. These are citywide rules. They work identically in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island.
You have three business days to hire a licensed plumber and repair the line. Business days, not calendar days — a notice served on a Friday runs to the following Wednesday. An inspector returns afterwards to verify the work was done.
Three things happen together:
By the time this arrives the water is already off. You have ten business days to complete the repair. Miss that and the service simply stays off until the work is done. No further penalty is added — but nobody can live in, or trade from, a building with no water.
The part that catches people out
The clock does not pause while you collect estimates. Permits have to be filed with DEP and DOT before anyone can legally open the street, and that filing takes time inside your three days. Calling a plumber on day three is usually already too late.
A service line repair or replacement in New York City is excavation work in a public street, not plumbing under a sink. The sequence:
This is the part that surprises owners, and it is written into the rules rather than left to a contractor’s judgement. Under Title 15 of the Rules of the City of New York, a full replacement is required — not a patch — in several situations:
So if someone offers to patch a lead or galvanized service line, that is not a cheaper option — it is work the city will not sign off. Knowing which material is in the ground before anyone quotes is the difference between one job and two.
A detail worth asking any contractor about
The rules also require at least three feet of copper tubing formed into a gooseneck at the connection to the city tap, and a house control valve with lead content under 0.25%. These are the details an inspector checks and an unlicensed installer skips.
It depends entirely on what failed. A localised leak on an otherwise sound line is a different job from a collapsed service under a roadway that needs full replacement and DOT restoration.
What determines it: the depth of the line, whether the street or only the sidewalk has to be opened, ground and rock conditions, how quickly permits clear, and whether the failure is a single point or the whole run. A crew can give you a realistic window once they have seen it — and an honest one will not commit to a number before that.
Nobody can quote a service line repair over the phone, and you should be wary of anyone who tries. The price is driven by length, depth, whether the roadway is opened, restoration requirements and permit scope — none of which are knowable until someone looks.
Two things are worth checking while you wait: whether your property insurance covers service line damage, and whether you are enrolled in DEP’s Service Line Protection Program, which some owners have without remembering.
A water main does not break during business hours as a courtesy. A real person answers our phone overnight, on weekends and on holidays — not an answering service taking a message for the morning.
How fast a crew reaches you depends on what is actually happening and where. An active break flooding a basement is dispatched differently from a slow leak under a sidewalk that has been weeping for a week, and a job on Staten Island is not the same drive as one in Sunset Park. That first call is a triage conversation: what you are seeing, whether the water is contained, whether a valve will turn. You will be told honestly what can happen tonight and what realistically happens in the morning — which is more use at 2am than a number we might not be able to keep.
Lady Liberty Contracting Corp is a woman-owned, WBE-certified sewer and water main contractor in Brooklyn, working under a New York City Licensed Master Plumber on staff — not subcontracted out. We file the DEP and DOT permits, carry out the excavation, and restore the sidewalk or roadway. One contract, start to finish.
Broken water main right now? Call (718) 965-3500
Answered by a person, 24 hours a day, across all five boroughs.
A broken water main behaves differently in each borough — street type, depth, permit scheduling and restoration requirements all change what the job looks like. Crews are dispatched 24/7 across all five.
Related: 24/7 emergency sewer and water main service · water main repair · water main replacement · NYC DEP notices and compliance
Both, and the order matters less than the speed. Calling 311 puts the break on the city's record. Only a licensed plumber can repair your service line, and only a licensed plumber can pull the permits to open the street.
No. The city maintains the main in the street. The service line running from that main to your building is the property owner's responsibility, including the section beneath the public sidewalk.
A $1,000 charge is added to your next water bill, your water service is shut off, and a 10-Day Notice is issued. After that the service stays off until the repair is complete.
No. New York City does not permit repairs on lead service lines — where lead is present the line has to be replaced. The same applies to galvanized steel or galvanized iron lines needing any repair.
No. The 3-Day and 10-Day Notice process is identical across all five boroughs. What changes borough to borough is street conditions, depth and permit scheduling — which affect the job, not the deadline.
Yes — a person, not an answering service, 24 hours a day including weekends and holidays. How quickly a crew reaches you depends on what is happening and where you are, and you will be told honestly on the call.
