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.
Labadie is an unincorporated community in Franklin County, Missouri, United States. It is located about three miles north of Gray Summit. The community is named after Sylvester Labaddie, Jr. , a hunter who (by some accounts) was killed by a bear in nearby Labaddie's Cave. A county history published in 1968, however, records that he "died peacefully in his bed in his seventieth year, on July 25, 1849, at his home on Olive Street in St. Louis. " Labadie post office was established June 7, 1855. Labaddie Creek enters the Missouri River here, and this was the location of Labaddie Station of the Missouri Pacific Railroad.