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.
Paducah is the largest city in Kentucky's Jackson Purchase Region and the county seat of McCracken County, Kentucky, United States. It is located at the confluence of the Tennessee River and the Ohio River. The population was 26,307 at the 2000 census. Twenty blocks of Downtown Paducah have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is the hub for the Paducah Micropolitan Area and the western Kentucky region, the Paducah micropolitan area includes McCracken, Ballard and Livingston counties in Kentucky and Massac County in Illinois. Paducah and Chillicothe, Missouri are the only two cities named in the world-famous song "Hooray for Hollywood", which opens the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards yearly (the Oscars). (Both cities' names were misspelled in the original lyrics to the song.)