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.
Lavallette is a Borough in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States. As of the United States 2000 Census, the borough population was 2,665. Lavallette is situated on the Barnegat Peninsula, a long, narrow barrier peninsula that separates Barnegat Bay from the Atlantic Ocean. Lavallette was incorporated as a borough by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on December 21, 1887, from portions of Dover Township, based on the results of a referendum held two days earlier. Lavallette was named for Elie A. F. La Vallette, one of the first rear admirals appointed in the United States Navy when President Abraham Lincoln created the rank in July 1862, and the father of Albert T. Lavallette, co-founder of the borough. New Jersey Monthly magazine ranked Lavallette as its 8th best place to live in its 2008 rankings of the "Best Places To Live" in New Jersey.