Public utilities provide electric, gas, water or telephone service to customers in a specified area. Utilities have a duty to provide safe and adequate service on reasonable terms to anyone who lives within the service area on without discriminating between customers. Because most utilities operate in near monopolistic conditions, they can be heavily regulated by local, state, and federal authorities. Generally, the local and state agencies are called Public Service Commissions (PSC) or Public Utility Commissions (PUC). Municipal Utilities and Rural Electric Cooperatives may be unregulated though.
Bauxite is a town in Saline County, Arkansas, United States. The population was 432 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Little Rock–North Little Rock–Conway Metropolitan Statistical Area. The town is named for the mineral bauxite, the source ore for aluminum, which was found in abundant quantities in the area and became a source of aluminum refining (two local roads are named Alcoa and Reynolds, after the major producers which later merged).