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.
Dodson is a village in Winn Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 357 at the 2000 census. Dodson was the birthplace of the Alexandria businessman Morgan W. Walker, Sr. (1893–1983), the founder of what became Continental Trailways and Walker-Roemer Dairy and a director of the former Guaranty Bank and Trust Company. Morgan Walker's cousin, William Stewart Walker, a United States Army soldier in World War II who later rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, grew up north of Dodson in the Wyatt community in Jackson Parish. In 1964, he was the Republican nominee for the former 8th congressional district seat in the United States House of Representatives in 1964. He was defeated by Speedy O. Long of La Salle Parish. W.S. Walker is interred in Transport Cemetery in Dodson.