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.
Villas, better known as the Villas is a census-designated place and unincorporated area located within Lower Township, in Cape May County, New Jersey. It is part of the Ocean City Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the United States 2000 Census, the CDP population was 9,064. Villas is the site of Blitz's Market, where one of the four winning Mega Millions lottery tickets was sold to a disabled veteran on August 31, 2007. In 2008, residents discovered that copper piping had been stolen from under several homes in the area. It was later found that much of the piping was corroding due to large amounts of water seeping through fissures in the disintegrating roads, that are finally under repair.