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.
Deal is a Borough in Monmouth County, New Jersey, USA. As of the 2000 Census, the borough population was 1,070. The Borough of Deal was incorporated as a borough on March 7, 1898, by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature, from portions of Ocean Township. Deal boasts a significant population of Orthodox Sephardic Jews, mainly of Syrian extraction. In the 2000 Census, 16.4% of Deal residents identified as being of Syrian heritage, the greatest percentage of Syrian Americans in any municipality in the country. Deal's population swells to over 6,000 during the summer, many of them Syrian Jews.