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.
Port Sulphur is a census-designated place (CDP) on the West Bank of the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 3,115 at the 2000 census. The name Port Sulphur derives from the Freeport Sulfur Company in the early 1900s, when it set up drilling, refinery and shipping operations. The site is valuable because of its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico, its docking site along the Mississippi River and the surrounding natural resources.