Water operator salaries by state and employer
What water and wastewater operators earn at each city, county and water or sanitation district: the official pay range for each operator title next to what operators actually earned. California is on the site now; more states follow as we collect their data.
Work in progress
Water operator pay in more states, as we collect the data
This page will compare water operator pay across states. For now California is the only state with data on the site. Each state publishes local government pay differently, and each certifies operators in its own way, so we add states one at a time, after checking their files and deciding which jobs count.
Until then, the California page has everything we've published so far: every employer with 5 or more operators, compared statewide, and which water jobs count as operators there and which don't.
Source for the California figure
Total pay is total wages of operators who worked roughly the full year: those whose regular pay reached at least 90% of the bottom of their official range.
- State Controller's Office, Government Compensation in California, 2025: wages of every water and wastewater operator position.