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.
Aurora is a Home Rule Municipality spanning Arapahoe, Adams, and Douglas counties in Colorado. The city is the third most populous city in the state of Colorado and the 58st most populous city in the United States. The city had an estimated population of 319,057 in 2008-07-01. The city and its western neighbor are the principal cities of the Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area, which in 2007 had an estimated population of 2,464,866. , the estimated population of the Denver-Aurora-Boulder Combined Statistical Area was 2,998,878 on 2007-07-01.