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.
Harlowton is a city in and the county seat of Wheatland County, Montana, United States. The population was 1,062 at the 2000 census. The city was once the eastern terminus of electric operations (1914–74) of the Milwaukee Road railroad's "Pacific Extension" route, which went all the way to Avery, Idaho. Here, steam or diesel locomotives were changed or hooked up to electric locomotives. Harlowton was founded in 1900 as a station stop on the Montana Railroad, a predecessor to the Milwaukee, and was named for Richard A. Harlow, the Montana Railroad's president.