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.
Bonfield is a village in Kankakee County, Illinois, United States. Bonfield's population was 364 at the 2000 census. It is included in the Kankakee-Bradley, Illinois Metropolitan Statistical Area. Although founded by quarryman Thomas Verkler, the village was named after Thomas Bonfield, an attorney for the Kankakee & Seneca Railroad Company, which established a depot in the village. A name was needed for this depot, someone suggested "Bonfield", and that's what stuck. The railroad has long since disappeared into history but it had been on Johnson Street. Old railroad spikes and ties might still be found around the limestone quarry. The depot was moved about a mile and a half south of the village and converted to a barn, which remains today (12/31/2007). The town originally had a high school, but it burned down in the early 1930s. Students then went to Herscher High School in Herscher, Illinois.