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.
Vidalia is a city in Toombs and very slightly into Montgomery counties in the U.S. state of Georgia. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 10,491. It is the largest city in Toombs, but is not the county seat. Vidalia is said to be the named for the daughter of the railroad man who passed through the area on his route. Like so many towns in the region, it grew up around a train depot that serviced farmers in the area who grew such crops as pecans and tobacco. The famous sweet onions were not an important crop until much later. Vidalia is the principal city of the Vidalia Micropolitan Statistical Area, a micropolitan area that covers Montgomery and Toombs counties and had a combined population of 34,337 at the 2000 census.