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.
Pie Town is an unincorporated town on U.S. Route 60 in Catron County, New Mexico, United States. Its name comes from a dried-apple pie business that was established by Clyde Norman in the early 1920s. Pie Town hosts a Pie Festival on the second Saturday of each September. The town and its people were extensively photographed by Russell Lee, a photographer for the Farm Security Administration, in 1940. Pie Town, Lee's photos, and local restaurant "The Daily Pie Cafe", were the subject of an article in the Smithsonian Magazine in February 2005. The town is also home to one of the ten antennas which make up the Very Long Baseline Array.