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.
Tyrone is a ghost town located in Grant County, New Mexico, United States, in the southwestern part of the state. Tyrone was an elaborately planned community financed by the Phelps Dodge Corporation, based on Mediterranean and European styles, designed by well-known architect Bertram Goodhue and built in 1915 at a cost of more than a million dollars. A drop in copper prices in 1921 closed the mines and the town was deserted. The townsite was later destroyed as part of Phelps Dodge's development of the Tyrone open-pit copper mine, which began operation in 1969.