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Water Pipe. A continuous metallic underground water piping system shall always be used as the grounding electrode where such piping system is available.
As per the 1947 Edition of the National Electrical Code
Copper water main is still in wide use in my neck of the jungle. Plastic and pex has taken over with tract housing. I inspect between five and ten electrical service upgrades each week that have a metal water main.
I field several phone calls each week with a question about using the water main as an electrode. I know inspectors that allow a jumper to the nearest hose bibb rather than going all the way to the main.
There used to be a policy that if the water main is more than 150' from the panel then it wasn't required to be an electrode. Before that this AHJ didn't require the water main as an electrode at all. Any accessible point on the water pipe was good to go. I had more than one citizen tell me that they felt a electrical tingling while in the shower.
That was many years ago. When I became an inspector here I didn't know about the goofy policy so I wrote corrections requiring the water main to serve as an electrode. In about a year or so the policy righted itself.....For about ten years. Then it went back to the goofy policy for about five years. That's because we joined a League of Cities that didn't understand what they were doing. Now we are getting it right again.....
