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.
Glencliff is a village within the White Mountain National Forest in the town of Warren in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States. The village consists of fewer than one hundred residents and some forty man-made structures, including the Willing Workers Hall, the Glencliff Community Chapel, the old firefighter's garage, the Glencliff Improvement Cooperative (community water system), the Post Office (located in one of the dwellings) and the Glencliff Home for the Elderly (located higher up the mountain). There is no store, no gasoline station, no doctor. It is isolated from the modern amenities that most Americans consider necessary. Many of the villagers are related and those that aren't are treated as if they were.