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.
Hopewell is a Borough in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. As of the United States 2000 Census, the borough population was 2,035. Hopewell was incorporated as a borough by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on April 14, 1891, from portions of Hopewell Township, based on the results of a referendum held on March 21, 1891. Additional portions of Hopewell Township were annexed in 1915, and the borough was reincorporated in 1924. Hopewell was the town nearest to the estate owned by Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh in East Amwell. Their firstborn son, Charles Augustus Lindbergh III, was abducted from their home and later found dead near the town. See Lindbergh kidnapping for more information about the incident involving the Lindbergh child. Hopewell Township, the much larger municipality which surrounds Hopewell Borough, includes the land along the east side of the Delaware River to which George Washington and the Continental Army crossed from Pennsylvania. Once in Hopewell Township, the army marched to Trenton on Christmas Day, 1776. The Battle of Trenton followed. Today, Washington Crossing State Park commemorates this important milestone in American history.